


Team Fortress 3: Robot War

by Divergent_Pathways



Series: Team Fortress 3: Insurgents [1]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22337224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Divergent_Pathways/pseuds/Divergent_Pathways
Summary: The first chapter of Team Fortress 3's first season: Insurgents, soon to be followed up with Beyond Starlight.In 1983, a group of nine kids go on a job to kill the CEO of Mann Co, Olivia Mann, causing a situation to evolve into something they never expected it to.(Note: This was not proof read. We intend to proof read in the future.)
Series: Team Fortress 3: Insurgents [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1607896
Kudos: 1





	Team Fortress 3: Robot War

Chapter 1  
Fortress Frontline

January 15th. Monday.  
1983

Kira wakes up and pulls herself out of the water and starts coughing. She wipes her glasses with her arms, clearing her vision, only enough to see. She looked up at the area around her.   
The area was dark. She was on a large rock with little grass and moss, though whatever of each was there was purple. On the side, there was orange, glowing crystals. There was a small puddle of water which she was still laying in. The sky had small rocks slowly flying through the sky. A blue and orange thing that looked like a manta ray flew past the other rocks. A man stood in front of her. Kira got up off the ground and walked through the water and he started turning around. He looked old, but his hair was still a brown color. His skin was pale as though he was a corpse. His eyes didn’t have color, they were just grey. He was wearing a business suit.  
“Kira Ensley, or, if you rather, Mann, we meet at last. Or, at least, I do not believe we have met as of yet, however, I see you as quite an important asset.” He was speaking slowly with a raspy voice. “I do believe you are planning to commence the raid tonight if I remember correctly, and it is for that reason that it is vital you find the Medi-Gun and this Saturday, go to Coal Town. You may believe this is nothing but a request, but it is rather a command. When you do, bring your… ‘Friends’. I apologize for what you must see as nothing beneficial, but I promise.” He steps closer. “It does nothing but ensure your survival.” He smiles and chuckles to himself while looking at the ground. “Even if you don’t want to…” He looks up at Kira as the area around her starts to get dark. “You’ll find yourself there one way or the other.” The area gets bright and for a single second, his skin was red and his eyes were yellow.

Kira opens her eyes and reaches for her glasses on the table next to her desk. She took a moment to catch her breath. Kira pushed the covers off her and walks over to the dresser and opens it. She considers wearing a skirt, though puts on jeans, a pink shirt with the TROJλN logo and a sweater. She takes a step into a hallway.   
Everybody’s rooms were large because they used to be classrooms. The entire building was an abandoned school. Nobody on the team except Colton knew why it was shut down because he was the only one who ever actually read why. He kept the papers in his room, though everybody else had just assumed it was because they ran out of funding to keep it open or nobody in the area would continue to go and eventually, the school had to be shut down.  
Most of the metal attached to the ceiling had rusted and so did the roof, also being made of metal. Some of both had fallen onto the ground, which had been covered in dirt and dust. The carpet was torn up, some of it burned or stained.  
Some of the walls had been broken too, along with the glass being cracked, broken, or gone entirely.  
Kira’s room of the school was the 6th-grade area. All of the rooms were in the 6th-grade area, as there were five classrooms and five people on the team.  
The Entrance to the building was two glass doors with more glass around them. One of the doors didn’t open due to rusting. Behind that, there was the office and an area with couches. The couches were dark causing the color of them to have gone from red to almost black. Behind that was the cafeteria and kitchen. One short, brown-haired girl with green eyes and white skin sat in a chair with a bottle in her hand on her stomach, her feet on the table in front of her. She was wearing a silk black hoodie, a redshirt, and black pants, black shoes, and a red bandana. Her red gloves were on the table in front of her.  
Kira walked into the kitchen where a boy leaned against the counter with a shotgun next to him, and a cheeseburger next to the shotgun. His hair was also brown, though his eyes were blue. His skin color was white and his body structure was chubby though more muscular than anybody on the team.  
Kira grabbed her phone off the counter.  
“Hey, Kira, you seen Charlie anywhere?” He asks. “I’ve known him since 1974, and I can’t find him anywhere.”  
“No, I’m pretty sure he’s living some other place in Starlight at the moment. He bought it from some Scottish guy who asks for eyeballs.”  
“You’re kidding, right?”  
“Nope.” Kira looks down at her phone and checks the time before putting it back on the counter. “Hey, Audric, how much ammo do you have left for your gun?”  
“The buyer sent some more last night. I say I’ve got more than I need, hell, more than I can carry, which, admittedly, isn’t very much.” He takes a bite of his cheeseburger.  
Kira chuckles. “You’re gonna need it. Tonight ain’t the night we wanna run out of ammo.”  
“Yeah, not tonight. Hey, what time are we leaving? Eight? Nine?”  
“Twelve. We’re leaving at Twelve, the later, the better.”  
“Alright, alright, got it.” He finishes the burger and tosses the wrapper in a trash bin. “Okay, I’m gonna go out and see if I can get involved in anything, or see if I can get cash of some sort. Not a big fan of what Dan’s doing to get a beer around these parts, so the way I see it, it’s better I spend cash to get her some.”  
Kira follows Audric back to the cafeteria. Audric stops for a second and looks at the girl before turning to Kira. “You wanna wake her? She wasn’t here when I got in.”  
“Sure. You go on ahead.” Audric nods and walks past her. Kira walks over to the girl and shakes her. The girl doesn’t respond. Kira shakes her again and comes to the same result. She puts a finger under the girl's nose to see if she was breathing. She was. Kira grabs the bottle from her hand and looks at it. It was an empty bottle of alcohol, some of the alcohol having leaked onto her black hoodie, redshirt, and the floor.  
“Alright,” Kira mutters. She throws the bottle at a table not too far from the two and the girl wakes up.  
“Wh- Wa- Uh- Oh, hey, Kira.” She says.  
“Listen, Danielle, if you’re gonna drink, at least do it here. We can’t have people knowing we stay here, we’re already hunted by the police.”  
“I do only do it here.” She looks at the bottle in her hand. “I don’t want things happening out there.”  
“Well good, there are specific things we can’t risk, one of them is the only alcoholic on the team getting drunk outside then getting arrested for being a part of Fortress Frontline.”  
“I was never too fond of the name away.” She got out of the chair and stood up. “Listen, Kira, I’ve got to go steal some more of this from some random people I find on the street or in a parking lot, if Colton asks where I am, tell him I’m at the school.”  
“At least buy the damn beer.” Kira says.  
“I’m Thirteen, Kira, nobody’s gonna sell me this stuff.”  
“I’m sure someone will if you do enough convincing.” Kira starts walking away. “Okay, I’ve gotta go check up on where Olivia is. Also, try that one place you’ve tried buying shit before. I hear if you pay enough, he’ll let you walk away with some of what you’re looking for.”   
Kira walks over to the exit of the building and leaves. Danielle looks at the shirt and the stain on it. “Ah, hell.”

“I found the parts,” Ian says. He drops the heavy box of metal, wires, and titanium. “It wasn’t easy, me, Brian, Rudy, Zachary, and Ethan did a lot for this. The Sentry gun works though I only have one way to get the laser guidance on the rockets to work and the wrangler to work.”  
Olivia turns around and looks at him. “We’ll need them both, what’s your idea, Waid?”  
Ian sighs. “An amputation. The wrangler Dell Conagher used is simply incompatible with our Mark 4 Sentry Guns, and recently acquired by his nephew, Justin Conagher. It’ll require an amputation of the hand, something like Dell’s-”  
“Gunslinger,” Olivia says. “A robotic hand like his gunslinger.” Olivia slides the box over to her and looks inside. “We could use some of the Titanium for the replacement and have our medics have the arm severed.” She looks up at Ian. “Only if you want to.” She slides the box back over to him. “It’s your choice.”  
Ian stops to think for a second. After a few seconds, he answers. “It’s no hindrance. I’ll do it.”  
Olivia nods. “I’ll let the medical team and technology team know.”

Charlie climbs onto the rock then into the window in the boy’s bathroom of the school. He walks into one of the stalls and climbs onto the toilet. He checked his bag. It was full of all the same weaponry that it always was. He moved one of the ceiling tiles and put his backpack inside before putting the ceiling tile back in.   
He climbed down and walked to a mirror to check if anything about his appearance was abnormal, primarily for any wounds, so he could make up a lie before someone asked about them.  
His hair was brown, with one of the fringes on the left side of his face dyed red. His eyes were a dark enough shade of brown that they actually looked black. His skin was white, and it was currently clear of any sort of bruising, or lacerations.   
Good. He thought. He walked over to the door and stepped out.  
“Charlie!” The Hall Monitor said. “You’re not supposed to be here. Let me guess, you’re late again and took the back door.”  
“Yep,” Charlie says. “What period is it?”  
“Lunch. I’m surprised this school still allows you here.”  
“Honestly, I am too, Ms. Howell.” Charlie starts walking down the hall to the cafeteria. He skips the line and doesn’t get food and sits down with Jason, who was looking at his phone.  
“Jason, what are you up to, man?”  
“Oh, oh, just talking with my sister.” Jason says. “There’s this small group of mercenaries hunting her, so basically, she’s at the house a lot less now. They’re called Fortress Frontline, you ever heard of them?”  
“Yeah, I’ve heard of them. Question, which one do you hate the most?”  
“Scout.” Jason says. “God, that man is so cocky, I just wanna shoot him, show him he’s not as untouchable as he thinks he is.”  
Charlie smiles. “Well, as far as I’m concerned, if I’m left out of their shenanigans, I have no issues.” Charlie looks around. “Hey, your sister doesn’t mind if you get in trouble at school, right?”  
“No, why?”  
“I’ve got no authority so…” He pulls a plastic spoon out of his pocket and takes some of Jason’s mashed potatoes. “I say we have a bit of fun if you’re pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down.” Charlie grabs a part of the spoon and pulls it back. He lets go and the mashed potato flies across the room and hits somebody in the back of the head.   
A Security Guard watches the encounter. “God… damn it, he’s doing it again.” He mutters.  
Charlie leans over to Jason. “And now. We either watch the chaos unfold or be a part of it.”  
“Chaos? It’s just a food fight.” Jason says.  
The kid who was hit with the potato grabbed his plate and smacked another student with it.  
“Not anymore,” Charlie says.  
Another student across the room throws his chair at another student before they can figure out what was happening, a full-on battle was going on in the cafeteria.  
Teachers were rushing in trying to get the students to calm down but very quickly became part of the fight as well. Charlie jumped onto the table and then did a flip behind a student, who had taken a breadstick from the kitchen, which was about five feet long and hit Charlie with it. It knocked Charlie to the ground and felt as though it had been concrete. Charlie looks up at the kid. “School Bread, eh?”  
The kid swings again and Charlie dodges into a table. He swings again, hitting the table as Charlie jumps onto it. Another swing is thrown as Charlie jumps off the table, grabs it, and hits the kid with it. He drops the breadstick and Charlie picks it up, hitting the kid with it again.  
A student looks over at Charlie. “Hey! That kid looks like the Scou-” He doesn’t finish his sentence before getting beat by multiple other students with breadsticks.  
“Hey, Charlie!” Jason yells from across the room. “Look up there!”  
Charlie looks up at the ceiling and one of the three platforms attached, a kid pushes a soda machine off and it hits the floor, smashing to pieces with soda cans rolling everywhere.  
Kids started to slip on them though Jason immediately ran over and grabbed one. He popped the can open and dropped a mint inside before throwing it at another student and having it explode, knocking a chair across the room and hitting a security guard.  
Other security guards, by this point, had started running in to defuse the situation with tasers. Charlie grabbed a soda can, opened it then dropped a mint inside before throwing it at one of the security guards having it explode in their face knocking his taser across the room. Charlie ran over and picked it up right before another student jumped on him.  
Charlie was quick to tase the student before looking at other security guards who had entered what used to be a cafeteria but was now a battlefield.   
It did not take long for security to be overpowered with breadsticks, and explosive soda cans made by the school. Eventually, the security guards started gaining the upper hand in the battle using the same breadsticks, soda cans, and chairs, so a kid pulled the fire alarm. The cafeteria’s cooks ran out of the kitchen and started to run in and start beating on students, security guards, and teachers using their spatulas. “Jason! Over here! Back to back!”  
Charlie and Jason got in a back to back and started firing taser rounds at anybody else in the cafeteria.  
A student climbed on stage then sprayed the whole area with a fire hydrant before the platforms attached to the ceiling fell down over the cafeteria, and the very moment it happened, students stopped fighting and started chanting. “Ayyy! America! America! America! America!”  
“What the fuck kinda school is this?” Charlie asks.  
“A school of freedom.” Jason responds.  
Everybody immediately stops chanting as a single gunshot echoed through the cafeteria. “Everybody! Return to your classes immediately. Charlie Franklin. My office. Now.”  
Jason chuckles to himself. “Yeah, you’re getting expelled this time.”  
Charlie chuckles as well. “Yep.” Charlie walks over and follows the counselor to her office. There were empty shelves with nothing but five books. There was no Ph.D. on the wall. The desk had papers on it.  
The woman sat down and put the gun in a drawer. Her hair was black and she wore glasses. She was wearing a purple sweater with a white shirt underneath and black jeans. “Charlie. Sit down.”  
Charlie casually sits down in one of the two seats. “You and I both know that giving me a lecture is a waste of both of our time, and not expelling me is just a mistake, so save the bullshit and send the email.”  
“Okay, first of all, I am not talking to you about the cafeteria situation just now.”  
Charlie got a confused look on his face. “Oh? Uh, I will admit, that got a bit out of control.”  
“I had to bring out a weapon. That’s far more than out of control.” The person opened a drawer and pulled out a folder. She set it on the desk. “My name is Elizabeth Pauling, and I am the person who paid for the assassination of Olivia Mann.”  
“Oh,” Charlie says. “That explains a bit.” Charlie sits up. “So, what have you summoned the Scout to ask?”  
“Nothing but a bit more information for you to relay to your friends.” Pauling opens the folder and grabs out a piece of paper. “Olivia Mann is, at most times, Coal Town in New Mexico, or Mann Co in Starlight City.” Pauling takes another paper. “There are guards stationed outside Mann Co who will radio for help once you start your attack, considering you’ve already attacked several times already.”  
“Is there anything you can get us about the inside of the building?”  
“I can’t. There’s no way for me to get inside, though I’m sure your Spy can find their way in.” Charlie nods and gets out of the chair and walks to the door. “Hey, Franklin, before you go.” Charlie turns back around and looks at Pauling. “There’s this one person who has been watching you from the top of buildings. He’s also been showing up in the school watching you and your friends. I just wanted to let you know.”  
“Don’t worry.” Charlie starts walking to the door again. “I already know who that is.”  
A student falls through the door with a stab wound, and a half eaten a hotdog in his stomach. “Why are the hotdogs here so sharp!?” He yells.

It was 1976.  
Charlie was thrown against the wall. He quickly turned around and dodged the person trying to stab him, though the knife made a cut on his arm.  
Charlie’s sister, Sara, in the same room as those two were in, had been bleeding out on the ground. Charlie tried to punch the man but got stabbed in the stomach. Quickly, the man pulled the knife out then stabbed Charlie in the neck. He quickly fell to the ground, covering his neck with both hands. He fell to the ground and dropped his hands on the ground.  
The person’s face was concealed, though Charlie couldn’t tell what clothes were being worn. As his vision faded to black, he looked one last time at Sara.   
He woke up on a red and yellow carpet. The area was warm and the room had been lit from fire outside.  
Charlie got up from the ground and turned around. A red man wearing a suit with red horns on his hand and a goatee. “Hi, welcome to The Hell Resort, enjoy your stay.” He says.  
“Wait, wait, wait, wait!” Charlie says.  
“Listen, Ludewig, I’ve already given you all my pens, I have nothing else to give to y-” The man looked up at Charlie. “Oh, Mr. Franklin. My friend has been expecting you.”  
“You- You know my name?” Charlie asks.  
“Yes, a friend I have has been waiting for you to show up. I am the Devil, nice to meet you, this is The Hell Resort, we have infinite floors and you can either give me your soul or work here for eternity.”  
“Wait, work here?”  
“Yep. We don’t torture people here. Not anymore. Too many feminists got mad about that and started killing themselves. It made hell worse for the people doing the torturing rather than the ones being tortured so we just made them work for one dollar an hour because working at a hotel with infinite floors where everybody in the multiverse can visit with less than minimum wage is a better hell than touture. We never actually give them that money. Anyway, now, people just work for visitors of the hell resort here.”  
“Alright.” Charlie nods. “I would happily sell my soul for a second life.” Charlie puts his hands on the desk. “I just wanna go back.”  
“Okay, it’s done.”  
Charlie got a confused look on his face. “Really? That’s it?”  
“Yeah. Walk into that door and you’ll meet up with Satan and be taken back to Earth.”  
Charlie turns around and walks to the door in the front of the room as the Devil continues his paperwork. He walks to the doors and opens them and the area around him immediately goes dark.   
“Mr. Franklin, we meet at last.” A man slowly shows up in front of him. He looked old, but his hair was still a brown color. His skin was pale as though he was a corpse. His eyes didn’t have color, they were just grey. He was wearing a business suit. “I have been told you have made a deal with my friend. Well, I am sure you would like to go back and find the man who did this, yes?”  
“Whatever it takes.” Charlie says. “I will kill that man.”  
“I will tell you who did this. I will give you the opportunity to kill him if you make one promise to me. In 1983, kill the team you are working with. You may not understand now, but I promise, you will understand soon. Do we have a deal?”  
Charlie nods. “Yes. We have a deal.”  
The man smiles. “The man who killed you and your sister is… Jason. Mann.”  
A loud ringing in Charlie’s ears came and he woke up, back in the darkroom again, breathing heavily.  
He reached for his neck to check for the wound and it wasn’t there. There wasn’t even a scar for any of his stab wounds. Charlie got up off the ground and walked over to Sara’s body. “I’ll kill him. For you.”

The group was in West Starlight. The Scout, Demogirl, Heavy, Medic, and Spy. A simple, small group of five.  
“Remember,” Colton says. “Kira’s leading this mission.” He wore a white lab coat with a medic emblem on the sleeves with a backpack holding medical supplies in it. He wore black pants, a redshirt, and a bullet vest under the shirt. Everyone on the team kept bandanas or some other form of facial wear as a means of concealing their identities.  
Colton kept a surgical mask in the color of bright red, almost appearing pink.  
“Ensley, what’s the plan?”  
Kira turned away from the building and looked at him. “You guys create a distraction and I get in. I have a secret back door.”  
“We’ve fought larger groups, right?” Danielle asks.  
“No. We ran from them.” Colton says. “We have about an hour before the police would be able to show up.” He stands up and looks at Starlight’s Mann Co building from the hill they were all on. “Kira, how long do you think it’ll take you to find the blueprints?”  
“Half an hour, if I’m not distracted.” Kira raises her scarf over her face, leaving it right under her glasses. She wore a red scarf, an open black trench coat without sleeves. Under the trench coat, she wore a white shirt with sleeves that stopped at the elbow. She had black rubber gloves, dark red pants, black shoes, and a purple pair of glasses. “At most, fifty minutes.”  
“That leaves ten minutes before officers arrive.” Colton says. He reaches his hand down to Kira. She grabs on and he pulls her up. “Get in there and find that thing as fast as you can. We’ll provoke them then hold our ground, you go in and out as fast as possible.”  
Kira nods. “Got it.”  
“We have to attack first.” Audric gets up and grabs his M249 from the ground. “If she goes in before we attack, she’ll be noticed either outside or inside.” He reloads the gun then holds it by a handle on its side. “They won’t notice her if we’ve caused chaos among the building.”  
“I’m up with this.” Charlie says. He gets off the ground and cocks his shotgun. “Get off the ground, girl, we’re going on with this.”  
Danielle rolls her eyes and groans as she grabs her grenade launcher and gets up.  
Colton starts walking down the hill as everyone else follows closely behind. The group runs up behind a car in the parking lot.  
There were four guards. They were dressed in a blue shirt, black pants, and a bulletproof vest, with a gas mask with blue lenses. They all held AR15 Assault Rifles.  
“So, whose this Ensley guy?” Their voices sounded as though they were being put through a radio.  
“I don’t know. Boss won’t tell us anything. The only thing we were told is that she’s a girl with some friends and guns. Still not out of middle school.”  
“What are we supposed to do with them?”  
“Anything we want. Except for the girl. Boss wants the girl. You didn’t miss too much at the briefing. She only knows Ensley’s name.”  
“Isn’t this illegal?”  
“Kira.” Colton starts whispering. “Get moving.” He reaches into his right leg holster and pulls out an Uzi. “You all got your guns ready?”  
Danielle smiles as she holds the grenade launcher in front of her face. “See if you can keep up this time, Franklin.”  
“Shut up.” Charlie responds. He pulls his Lever Shotgun off his backpack and peeks through the car windows. “Followin’ your lead.”  
Colton nods. “Make sure to keep watch of the balcony.” He gets up from behind the car and opens fire on the guards as he starts to run behind another car.  
“I’m hit!” The four get behind cars.  
“We’ve got hostiles!”  
Charlie puts the shotgun away and pulls his two pistols from his legs. He gets out from behind the car holding both of them in front of him. “Hey, big guys! Shoot at me!” He starts firing at the Guards and kills one as others start to exit the building.  
Danielle starts blind firing grenade while Audric starts firing at the cars. The cars start exploding as the grenades detonate, and the guards start scrambling in search of cover.   
A “We request heavy reinforcements! We’re taking heavy fire! There are four hosti-!”  
Charlie starts firing at him before he can finish.“Shut up!” He yells. “Come on, come on! We’re sellin’ free buttplugs!”  
“We’re not selling shit if it’s free, Scout!”  
“We need some way to attract their attention!” Charlie looks at Danielle. “Hey! Demo! Is your beer flammable?”  
“Firstly, it’s alcohol!” Danielle fires off three more grenades. “Secondly,” She reaches into her bag and pulls out two bottles. “Yes! Throwing at the door!” Danielle throws the bottle and Charlie shoots at the puddle left by the two bottles and starts shooting at it.

Kira crawls through a vent for a few more seconds until the reached the other vent cover. She pushed it and it opened easily. Kira crawled out and closed the vent before checking out the room she was in. She was on the second floor of the Mann Co building. She walked out of the room and the alarms start going off.  
Kira goes invisible as soldiers start running down the halls past her. She walks down the hall slowly as to not create any sound as she walked as if anyone could even hear it. She looked down the hallway and walked through before crawling into another vent. As she reached the other vent cover, she heard the employees talking.  
“Brock took my thermal goggles again.”  
“How do you know it was Ethan?”  
The man groaned. “Damn kid always takes them.”  
“Shepard’s out today.” He walks over to another one of the lockers and opens it. “You can have his goggles.” He sets them down on the bench then walks out of the room. The other man walks over and puts them on before leaving the room.  
Kira opens the vent and climbs out. She walks over to one of the lockers and slips her switchblade into a padlock and breaks it. Kira takes it off and opens the locker. She reaches in and grabs what looked like wending goggles with a switch on the side. She put them on and her vision was unchanged. Kira flipped the switch then looked at her hands. Her entire body was yellow, orange and red while the rest of the room was blue. Kira groaned as she tossed the thermal goggles aside and walked out of the room.   
After a while of walking through the halls entirely invisible, four people, children, run past her. She walks down the hallway and opens a door. The room was large with two floors and a railing on the second one. The bottom floor had multiple metal boxes. Near the wall, there was a conveyor belt. Another person walked into the room on the bottom floor.  
“So, anybody notice those alarms a few minutes ago? What were they for?”  
“Those kids showed up again. Yeah, those kids. We’ve been told to grab our thermal goggles and look out for Ensley.”  
The man groaned. “Really? That’s the second time this month. Hell, the seventh time this year.”  
“They aren’t getting away this time. Police’ll be here in about an hour by now. We’ve just gotta keep them here long enough.”  
“So, how long until the bombardment?”  
“Few days. Why?”  
“I’m just so damn excited.”  
“Well, you better hold that excitement for a few more days. The Boss says Ensley's here.”  
The man nods. “Got it.” He reached onto his belt and put his thermal goggles on then turned them on. “Let’s find a spy.”   
Kira climbed over the railing and jumped onto a box. She climbed off and got onto the ground. She closed her fist and the necklace glowed.  
An employee walks behind another set of boxes and sees another employee. “Hey, Sylvester, your heat signature’s all fucked up. Nothing above the chest is…” The man stopped then quickly raised his gun. “Don’t. Move. An inch.”  
The man slowly raised his hands before running behind a box.  
“I found the spy!” The man yells. “I need help, my location!” The man runs to where he saw Kira. “Search the room! We can’t let that girl leave!”  
Kira waited a few minutes before she climbed out of the box. Nobody was nearby. Kira pulls her revolver from her leg and checks the ammo in her cylinder and then hops out of the box.  
Kira runs behind another box and looks out from behind it. Two people stood at the conveyor belt watching for her.   
Kira gets out from behind the box and starts firing at one of them, taking her first shot then her second one as the other guard raised his weapon. Kira aims at the second guard and misses her first shot, taking a bullet to the shoulder. She gets behind another box and checks for anybody nearby then hears a grenade hit the ground next to her. She runs from the sound as another guard hits her with the back of their gun, knocking her onto the ground. She shoots him in the foot the aims for the torso, shooting him twice.  
Another guard holding a shotgun runs out from behind another box and Kira steps behind another box, puts her revolver on her leg again then pulls her switchblade from her pocket. As the guard raises his gun, Kira jumps on him, stabs him in the neck pulls the knife out and stabs him again and as he fell to the ground, in the back.  
“Anybody see Ensley?” A Guard asks.  
“No!” Another one responds. “How many of us are left?”  
A few seconds of silence go past as Kira walks up the stairs before they start talking again.  
“It’s just us tw-” The man was interrupted by a gunshot. “Sylvester?” He kept the gun in front of him as he walked over to the stairs. As he takes the first step, he falls dead and Kira pulls a knife out of his back.  
She closes the switchblade then puts it back into her pocket. Kira walked over to the door one of the guards entered the room in, though it was locked. She looked over at the conveyor belt. She walked over, opened one of the metal boxes got in then let it close.  
After a few seconds of waiting, the conveyor started to move again. Kira moved the box’s lid up a bit and took a peek out in front of her, though it was just a wall. She let the lid back down and leaned against the box. Kira took her glasses off her face and wiped them with her shirt before putting them back on.  
Kira felt the box tilt a bit so got up and pushed the box’s lid. It almost fell so she grabbed it before she checked what was outside.  
The room was large with multiple floors, more than Kira cared to count. The box was being moved across the room by automated crane systems, along with other boxes. Some employees walked through the area pushing Polly truck boxes with metal parts in them, though they all stopped as the announcement system went on.  
“WARNING. KIRA ENSLEY IS STILL IN THE BUILDING. PERMISSION TO SHOOT ON SIGHT IS GRANTED. IF CAPTURED ALIVE, BRING TO HEAD OFFICE. FIVE CASUALTIES. REPEAT, PERMISSION TO SHOOT ON SIGHT IS GRANTED.”   
Kira saw four armed employees running across one of the floors as the box was set back down on a conveyor belt and continued with nothing but the wall in front of her. She let the lid close again and sat back down against the box. After a few seconds, it stopped again.  
“She’s in one of these boxes. I don’t know which one.”  
“Open all of them then.”  
Kira reaches for her knife and when a guard opens the box, she jumped up and stabbed him in the neck, leaving the knife in before dropping back into the box as soldiers started firing at the metal crate. Kira jumped out, firing her revolver at one. She got behind another box, then back out again and fired the last shot. She reloaded the revolver and aimed it around, though nobody was there.  
She walked over to the body and pulled her knife from it, before walking towards a door. She opened it and entered another hallway. She wandered through the hall until it split into multiple hallways and one room which didn’t have a label. Kira walked to the doors, checking the hallways before she entered then walked into the room. 

Audric got behind the car next to Charlie. “What are you doing here?”  
Charlie looked at Audric as he loaded two more clips into his dual pistols. “The hell does it look like I’m doing?” He got out from behind the car again and started firing. “Hey, assholes! Shoot at me!” He ran over to a car and put his pistols on his legs and grabbed one of his throwing knives. He jumped onto the roof of a car then jumped off, throwing his knife mid-air.  
Danielle loaded six grenades back into her grenade launcher. “Watch it! On the roof!” She starts running for cover as an arrow hits the ground next to her and explodes. She gets knocked off her feet behind another car and drops her grenade launcher. “It’s getting a little heated out here!”  
Charlie jumps over the car and gets next to her. “Yeah, no shit, Shurlock!”  
Audric gets behind cover as Colton draws their attention with his Uzi.  
Four more people, who looked around the same height as the rest of the group, had ran onto the balcony. “Zachary!” One of them yelled. He had a mechanical arm and wasn’t wearing a mask. He had a pair of goggles on his head he wasn’t wearing over his eyes, was light-skinned and wore a blue shirt with white, long sleeves and black pants. His shirt had multiple dark stains on it. He was wearing a backpack which had a shotgun on it and held a gas can in front of him. “Ready?”   
Zachary nodded. He was wearing a blue hoodie an emblem of fire on the arms and had a belt along his chest which held napalm grenades and was wearing a gas mask over his face, black gloves which looked to be made out of the same materials as the jacket. He put away his weapon and pulled out a flare gun from his leg.  
The kid threw the gas can and Zachary fired a flair.  
“Shit, everybody, move!” Charlie yelled out. Everybody got up, and the flair hit the gas can, causing it to explode. Charlie grabbed Danielle by the arm and threw her near where the rest of the team had ran before running himself, getting some fire on his arm.   
“We’ll grab his attention.” Danielle said as she got up. “You go around to flank them.”  
Charlie nodded and started running away from the battle near cars that hadn’t yet been damaged by the battle, then started running towards the building.  
One of the four kids noticed Charlie and turned around, firing a rocket launcher near their feet. The blast sent them flying into the air and they loaded another rocket back into their launcher. They shot at Charlie, but overshot, hitting the ground in front of Charlie.  
The blast knocked him off his feet and into a car, causing him to drop his shotgun. Charlie fell onto the ground and started getting up. As he did so, he got hit with a crowbar and his metal pipe fell off his bag on the ground in front of him. He quickly grabbed it and turned around just in time to block another crowbar swing.  
The person had a rocket launcher on their back, and a shotgun. He was wearing a blue camo shirt with short sleeves. Above that, he wore a bullet vest with a grenade belt. He wore a gas mask and black pants, though no helmet. His hair was messy and brown.   
Charlie kicked him in the stomach and jumped off the ground and hit the kid with the pipe, knocking him onto the ground. Charlie jumped to the ground and grabbed his shotgun from under a car. He got up and turned around as the kid loaded a rocket into the gun. Charlie jumped onto the car and he fired a rocket as Charlie jumped off.  
He jumped onto another car as the kid reloaded again and Charlie fired his gun, hitting the kid in the chest armor knocking him to the ground. “Strong armor, ain’t it?” He asked.  
Soldier reached for the rocket launcher as Charlie grabbed him by the back of his armor and threw him into a car windshield.

“Sentry Gun on the balcony!” Colton yelled out.  
“Don’t worry! I’ve got it!” Danielle grabbed a grenade from her back pocket and threw it.  
“Ian, watch it!” Zachary yelled out.  
The boy who’d thrown the gas can and was standing behind the sentry gun jumped out of the way as the grenade exploded, destroying the sentry gun. When the grenade exploded, the balcony fell down.  
Ian, who was now on the ground, grabbed his pistol and started firing at the group.  
Zachary took a napalm grenade off his belt and threw it at Colton. Impulsive, Colton stabbed it with his bonesaw and then threw it behind him and it exploded once it hit the ground.  
The Huntsman grabbed an arrow as Audric got behind a car. The tip of the arrow was glowing white, while lower on the tip it went from blue to red. He fired the arrow and it burned through the car and through Audric’s shoulder.  
“Holy shit!” Colton yelled.  
“Careful, careful!” Danielle yelled.

Charlie pointed a pistol at Soldier’s head and he grabbed his arm and threw him onto the roof of the car. He grabbed one of Charlie’s throwing knives and attempted to stab Charlie. He grabbed Soldier’s arm trying to keep the knife away from his neck as Soldier only kept applying force, though stopped once he noticed a light shining on Charlie. He let go of the knife and looked up at the sky where a police helicopter was.

Inside, the room was dark with a single lamp on a desk. Kira walks to the desk and turns on the light. She opened the desk and pulled out a folder with ‘CHECKS’ written on it. Kira opens it and looks through multiple checks that had been written inside.   
All of the checks were made after and during 1979. Some of them were gear, some paying employees, and more paying bills. Kira looked through the checks until she found something. More checks than anything else in the file had been for mechanical parts.  
Kira looks in the drawer with the files and looks at another folder. It had ‘FRONTLINE NAMES’. Kira takes it out and opens it. There was only one page inside and it had the names of all five people on Kira’s team.  
“Shit!” Kira immediately yells out. She takes the paper and folds it, putting it into her pocket. She opens another drawer and inside, there was a knife and a necklace.  
A stone on the necklace glowed light blue, though the knife’s blade glowed white with the handle being black. Kira reached for the stone on the necklace and grabbed it. She immediately felt a strong surge of electricity. She quickly let go and looked at her palm.  
Kira reached for the knife slowly, expecting something to happen, though nothing did when she touched it. She put the knife in the same pocket as the other knife. She looked at the necklace. She knew exactly what it was already, she already owned one of them, but the knife was new. Kira took the knife into the pocket. She grabbed the necklace by the chain and put it into her back pocket. “Change of plans.” Kira mutters. She opens the drawer with all the files and looks for one related to the knife. Eventually, she finds the paper. She turns around and looks at the window on the door. A man stood their, and he looked the same as the one before she woke up. “I got it.” Kira turns around and walks to the door and leaves the room. When she opened it, he wasn’t there anymore.  
Kira pressed a button on her earpiece. “Guys, change of plans. You’re leaving without me.”  
“No, you need to get out of the building first! Police are here and you’re entirely outnumbered. They could capture you, or kill you.” Colton said.  
Kira smiled. “That’s the plan.” She walks down the hall and opens a door.  
Immediately, a guard notices her and yells. “I see Ensley!” Kira takes the ghost knife and holds it in her left hand while holding her switchblade in her right hand. She started running and swung the Ghost knife while looking at a soldier above her. She was immediately teleported behind him and stabbed him in the back with the switchblade.  
Kira put it back into her pocket and grabbed her revolver, firing at a guard from across the room. She walked over to where the guard was. Behind him was a blast door with a handprint scanner. Kira took off her glove and put her hand on and the door opened. She put it back on and walked through the door.  
She was in a stadium with guards walking around, and at the top, a room where someone was watching down.  
Kira grabbed the revolver and ran up the stairs and started firing. Each one of them immediately noticed her. She swung the Ghost Knife and teleported behind someone then kicked them in the back of the leg knocking them to the ground then pinned them down with her foot and shot them.  
Kira saw a door and started running to it as guards everywhere else kept firing. She jumped onto the wall then used the ghost knife to get higher and land on a guard before stabbing them in the neck with her switchblade. As she got to the door, she turned around and started blindly firing causing the guards to get down. Kira opened the double doors and quickly closed them behind her. She looked around frantically and grabbed a chair, putting it between the door’s push handles. She ran up the stairs just as guards started trying to open it.  
She ran up two flights of stairs and got to another double door. She tried to open it but it was locked. Kira looked at the handle. Keycard. She turned around and ran back downstairs and opened another door then walked down a hallway. At the end of the hallway, she climbed a ladder. At the top, she climbed off then leaned against the wall, taking a breath. She took a second.  
Alright… Alright… Almost there. She started walking again down another hallway then opened the door. She was at the very top of the stadium. Explosive barrels had been put around the area and so were tripmine bombs. The soldiers started shooting at her and she shot one of the explosive barrels. The platform immediately fell as the guards on the bottom kept firing at her. She ran behind a pillar and kicked a barrel next to her off the platform. On the other side of the room, there was a vent cover.  
Kira swung the ghost knife teleporting her onto another platform. She shot another barrel then the vent. She got behind the pillar as more guards start firing at her. Kira jumped off and swung the knife again then climbed into the vent. Kira crawled through the vent for a bit then broke a vent cover on the floor. She fell into another room, the one right behind the locked doors.   
Kira aimed the revolver in front of her and started slowly walking to a person standing in front of the room. As she got close, she was hit in the back of the head with something hard. Kira fell to the ground unconscious.

“That’s the plan.” Kira says.  
“Damnit.” Colton responds. “Forget about Ensley! We’re pulling out! Back to the bikes!”  
The police from the helicopter above started firing at the eight on the battlefield. Anybody who came off the balcony started running away with Fortress Frontline as the four ran to their bikes on top of the hill.   
The four jumped on their motorcycles and started driving through the city. “We’ve got cars up ahead!” Danielle yells.  
“Right, go right!” Colton yells.  
The fours of them make a right turn and from the left turn, police on motorcycles start driving to them.  
“Behind us!” Audric yells.  
“Got it!” Charlie takes one of his pistols off his leg and starts blind firing at the police behind him. “Danielle, you got any grenades?”  
“I got two!” She reaches for one then takes the pin out with her teeth, then throws it over her shoulder. “Doing that isn’t as easy as it looks!”  
The grenade hits the ground and explodes as a cop car drives over it.  
“Startin’ to look like 4th of July up here!” Charlie yells.  
“Dan, what the hell?” Colton asks.  
“I thought they’d notice it!”  
“Watch it! Helicopter has an RPG!” Audric yells.  
A rocket from a military helicopter is fired and it hits one of the police cars.  
“Jesus!” Charlie yells. “It’s like they’re callin’ every police unit in Starlight!”  
“They are!” Colton says. “Through the alley!”  
Danielle grabs a laser tripmine. “I’d like to see them not notice this one!” As she drives into the alley she places one on the wall.  
“Watch it, watch it, comin’ through!” Charlie yells as he exits the alley.  
“How do we shake this helicopter!?” Danielle asks.  
“You looking for a simple answer or a crazy answer?” Charlie yells.  
“Anything!”  
“We drive through the subway system!”  
“What!?” Colton asked.  
“Colton, you heard ex-fucking-actly what I said and I fucking know it!”  
“Subway system it is!” Audric yells.  
The four drive down the stairs and civilians jump out of the way as the four ride onto the rail.  
“What if a train comes?” Danielle asks.  
“We die!” Charlie says.   
A few minutes go by as the four come out of the subway. They drive back up to the surface.  
“Look at that!” Charlie yells. “It worked!”  
“In front of us, in front of us!” Danielle yells.  
In front of them, a swat team had placed road spikes and a few cop cars were coming behind them. They were right next to a public park.  
“I’ve got an idea!” Audric yells. “Follow me!”  
The four follow Audric as he drives into the park. Charlie stops, prompting the rest to stop as well. He looks back at the police. “I’d like to see you drive your car through this one, assholes!”  
The helicopter from before flies over one of the buildings.  
“Shit, drive, drive, drive!” Charlie yells as the helicopter’s mounted machine gun starts firing at the four. They drive through the park then back onto the streets.  
The helicopter fired one last rocket and hit the center between the four, knocking them all of the bikes and onto the ground.  
Everyone got up and Charlie took his two pistols out. “Y’all want us!? Come and get us!” He started firing at the cops then ran to the entrance to an alley while the rest of the group runs through. Charlie follows them and jumps onto a dumpster and grabs a ladder. “You guys keep going, I’ll distract them!” Charlie starts climbing up the ladder and eventually, he was on the roof.  
Charlie ran over to the edge of the building and started firing his dual pistols at police cars to attract attention. He looked up at a helicopter he saw flying over. A blue laser came from the helicopter.  
Charlie got down as a sniper took a shot and ran over to the other side of the building and jumped onto another building and then tried jumping to another before falling and grabbing onto a window sill. Charlie let go and fell onto a dumpster. He runs out of the alley way as police get out of their car and start shooting at him. Charlie jumped over a guard rail and jumped onto a railway track as a train was heard in the distance.  
The cops ran over to the guard rail and Charlie just waved before jumping at the rain.  
“Is he dead?” A cop asks.  
“We’ll see later.” Another one says. “Scout got away, what about the others?”  
“Their location is unknown. They got away as well.”  
Charlie holds on to the train with one hand and calls the group with the other. “Alright, I got away by jumping onto a subway train.” He says. “You guys get away?”  
“Yeah.” Colton says. “We’re going back to the base right now, we’re going through the sewers.”  
“Anything from Kira?”  
“No, not after she told us to leave. I’m sure she’ll show up again soon.”  
“Let’s hope so.” Charlie looks around. “I’ll meet you three at school tomorrow, I have some eyes to give to Tavish, and find a way off this train.”

January 16th, Tuesday.

Kira wakes up with a bag over her head, and being dragged across the ground. The Ghost Knife and Deception Necklace were all invisible, with the glowing of the Lightning Necklace having stopped. They stopped dragging Kira and took the bag off her head. She was in front of her sister, Olivia.  
“Where are her weapons?”  
“I got ‘em.” A guard says.   
“Call the police, tell them we got one of the mercs.” Olivia says. She looks at Kira. “For the time being, I’ll have a talk with her.” She looked back up at the two guards. “Leave us.” The two guards nodded and walked away, and Olivia looked at Kira. “Get up, and come with me.”  
Kira got off her knees as Olivia walked over to a door, and put a combination in a panel on the wall next to it, and the two doors open. “Stay there in the middle of the room, I’ll get a key for the handcuffs.”  
Kira cracked her neck. “So, how’s running the company been?”  
“Slightly annoying.” Olivia says. “Especially since you joined a mercenary team to kill me.” She grabs a set of keys. “How’s Jason been? His grades still good?”  
“I thought you were the one living with him.” Kira said.   
“And I thought the two of you were still in contact.” Olivia says as she walks over. “Don’t worry, I haven’t told Jason anything. I’ve also been too busy here to check up on him very often.” Olivia unlocks the handcuffs and Kira grabs her wrist. “When the cops get here, I’m putting you back in those.”  
“Then why’d you unlock those?”  
Olivia looked at Kira and gave a somewhat disturbing smile, before looking away. “Remember how Dad died?”  
“Killed by some mercenary.” Kira said. “One that he hired, if I remember correctly.”  
“That’s the thing, Kira.” Olivia says. She walks over to a door and opens it. “He’s alive.”  
Kira rolled her eyes. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”  
Olivia chuckles. “Lucky for you, I can show you. Right now.” She opens a door and Kira walks over.  
Inside, an old man was on a medical bed. A vital sign monitor was next to him, the beeping quickly becoming an annoyance.  
“We’re trying to get him into better condition. Cops get here in 10 minutes, I’ll let you two talk until then.” Kira walks in and Olivia closes the door.  
Kira walks over to the man on the bed. “Dad?” She asks.  
The man turns his head and looks at her. “Kira…”  
“Dad, how… How are you here? You died eleven years ago.”  
“Olivia…” Gray coughed. “She made a deal with the devil… Satan, to be exact…” Gray painfully sat up. His skin was far more wrinkled than it was in all his photos. It looked almost as though there was no muscle, and under his skin, it was just bone. “These past few years… Olivia’s been creating an army… The same one I used to cause a stalemate with the Teufort Nine… She even has human soldiers, children, in fact… Some of them don’t even know their parents…”  
“Why should you care?” Kira asked. “You’re the first person to have made them in the first place.”  
“Because it’s your city she’s threatening.” Gray says, right before coughing again. “Those robots… They weren’t designed with the intent to take over a company… They were designed to kill, and that only.” He reached over to a desk and pulled a file off, and left it on the bed. “Take it… These robots… They’re bigger, stronger, and far more dangerous than mines…” He coughed again. “I don’t remember what they were called but… Right now… They’re after you and your friends… I spent my whole first life taking this company from my brothers, and I killed to get it…” He looked Kira in the eyes. “I need you to take it away from her… I don’t like what she’s done with this… This power… Take it for yourself, or give it back to Hale… Last I checked, he was somewhere in New York… Kill Olivia, if you have to…” He tried to laugh, though it was interrupted with a cough. “I can’t believe I’m saying this… After all these years.” He pointed to a desk across the room. “That’s where some of her plans are… The ones only she has access to… Look through it…”  
Kira walked over to the desk. She opened it and pulled out a file. Kira looked through it for a few seconds. “Wait! That’s…” She turned to Gray. “That’s my school.”

Charlie was in class, talking with Jason, with one earphone in listening to music and throwing a paper ball with Danielle.  
“All these beautiful women…” He glanced at Danielle than back at Jason. “And you wanna fuck the dog.”  
“Charlie, Danielle, stop that, Charlie, take the headphones out and stop talking.” The teacher said.  
Charlie rolled his eyes as Danielle threw the paper ball back to him, and he threw it across the room into the trash. He could barely hear her, but he could hear enough to understand the instructions. He took his phone out, turned it off, then took the headphones out.  
“If I catch you with your phone again, I’m gonna have to take it.”  
“Got it.” Charlie said. A few seconds went by before the announcements went off.  
“Lock down, lock down, this is not a drill, lock down. Any students outside their classrooms, find a hiding spot immediately, I repeat, this is not a lock down.”  
Charlie looked over at Danielle, and she looked at him, and they both nodded. Charlie turned to Jason. “Okay, I’m gonna to check outside with Danielle, you lock the door behind us, got it?” Charlie and Danielle got up, and started walking over to the door.  
“Wait, where are you going?” Jason asked.  
“You got it?” Charlie asked as Danielle left.  
“Wait, Charlie, get back here, now!” The teacher yelled as he ran out the room and closed the door behind him. She looked at the students for a few seconds before saying something. “I don’t get paid enough to deal with that fucking kid.” She walked over to the door and locked it behind him.  
Charlie and Danielle ran down the hall to their lockers. Danielle was already opening her’s, while Charlie just got there. “Where’s your brother?” He asked.  
“On his way.” Danielle said. “...Probably.” She reached into the locker and grabbed her weapons and started reloading the grenade launcher. “I’ll go look for him, you grab all your weapons and get dressed.”  
“Don’t have to.” Colton said. “Already here, Audric’s already dressed, and he’s grabbing his weapons, Kira’s location is still unknown.” He says as he opens his locker.  
Charlie reaches in and grabs his bag, and makes sure he has all his weapons. “Shotgun, pistol, pipe, knives, I got everything.” He reaches in and grabs his suit, and starts undressing from his uniform.  
“I got everything.” Danielle says, and she starts doing the same.  
“Copy.” Colton says.  
Audric walks over to the group. “Hostiles are outside the school, couldn’t get a very good look at them from down here though.”  
Charlie puts on his gloves. “Okay, you guys, get to the front of the building, I’ll get to the roof and check what’s going on up there.” He put on his bandana then grabbed his bag. “I’ll let you three know what I find.” He ran down the hall and into the restroom, then climbed into a vent. After a minute of crawling through, Charlie was on the roof. He ran over to the edge and looked at the fleet of vehicles coming. He presses his earpiece. “We’ve got several… Vans of soldiers coming.  
“How many do you estimate?” Colton asks.  
“I dunno, 100, 200?”  
Danielle groans. “This… Is gonna take a while.”  
Charlie smiles. “Doesn’t it always?”  
Someone gets out of the car carrying a rocket launcher. He fires it at the front of the school building and the glass in the front of the building gets destroyed, along with some of the building exterior. The balcony falls onto the ground in front of the school as more soldiers get out of the vans.   
Charlie jumps down to the ground from the roof, and grabs his two pistols. “Open fire?”  
Colton takes the Uzi off his leg. “Open fire.” He starts firing at the soldiers as more and more of them get out of the cars, and start firing back.  
Colton, Audric and Danielle get behind walls.  
“It’ll be easier for me to hit them from the roof!” Danielle yells.  
Charlie breaks a vent cover next to her. “In here.” Charlie climbs out. “You keep crawlin’ till you get to the roof.” He takes his duel pistols out and runs around the corner and start firing at the Mann Co Soldiers as Danielle crawls into the vent.  
“They’re pushin’ forward!” Charlie yells. “Fall back?”  
“No!” Colton yells. “Hold your fire, let them come!” He gets behind the wall again. “We need to close the distance between us! Dan, come back down here!”  
“On route.” Danielle responds.  
Charlie ducks behind one of the lunch room tables as the soldiers stopped firing. “Got it, I’m hidden.” He puts the pistols away and takes the shotgun off his bag. He peers slightly over the table. “They’re coming, that what you want?”  
“Yeah.” Colton says. “Keep waiting until I say so.”  
“Take the other entrances!” A soldier yells.  
Everyone stays quiet, Colton and Danielle look at each other. Colton presses his earpiece. “Start attacking again on my mark.” He puts his Uzi away and takes out his bone saw, as everybody else readies themselves. Colton waited a few seconds. “Now!” He turned the corner and stabbed a soldier.

“The robots…” Gray says. “They were designed to divide and conquer… Make those who rely on others fight alone… Rather than together…” He coughed again. “The lightning necklace… Give it to your team’s Scout…”  
Kira looked at him and put the file back on the desk. “Why him? Why not our Medic?”  
“If… You knew… What that thing does… You’d be saying exactly what I am…” He looked at the digital clock from across the room. He could barely read it, though he could see what it said. “In a minute… Your sister should be coming in… You were never too attached to me-” He coughed again. “Were you?”  
Kira stopped for a moment before shaking her head. “No, why?”  
“Good… Olivia’s deal with the devil is what brought me back to life, but she’s using a new energy source to keep me that way… One far more unstable than Australium…”  
“What is it?” Kira asked.  
“Did you ever hear about the border world called… Xen? It’s a subway station between timelines and dimensions… It’s the only dimension that doesn’t have multiple timelines, and theoretically, it can be used to travel from one dimension to another, or even more dangerously… Time travel… Nothing there is native to that dimension except for…” He coughed again, this time, a small bit of blood fell onto the blankets on top of him. “The Xen Crystals… They’re a power source… Just as powerful as Austrailium, but far more unstable… They have a portal room, underground… -25th Floor… When you get the chance… Destroy it…”  
“Wait, but isn’t that… What’s keeping you alive?” Kira asks. “What’ll happen if I do destroy it?”  
“I’ll kill me.” Gray answers. “The longer I’m left on Life Support with this power source, the more it hurts… I don’t know how many dimensions or timelines use the Xen Crystals for energy…” He coughed once more. “But I need you to make sure Mann Co doesn’t use it anymore… Can you do that?”  
Kira nods. “Yeah. I can do that. I promise.”  
Olivia opened the door. “You’re leaving.” She puts Kira in handcuffs and she doesn’t fight back. “I’ll talk with you later, Dad.” She starts walking Kira out of the room.  
On the button floor, Olivia walks outside, with Kira masked with her scarf. “You have her weapons?”  
“We have them.” An officer says. “One of your employees just gave them to us.” He looked at Kira. “Unmask the girl.”  
Olivia nodded and lowered the scarf off Kira’s face. “My own sister.” She says.  
“So, do you think the rest of them are minors?”  
“I know they are.” Olivia says. “The Police Chief told me to send a squad to their school to grab the other four.”  
“Alright. We’ll dispatch some officers to get the children. Just leave the students unharmed.” Two cops walk over and take Kira to a cop car.  
“That’s my intention, Officer.”

Audric grabs someone’s leg, causing them to fall on the ground, before bending it, far enough to break the person’s leg. Audric then grabs the person. “Scout!” He throws the person and Charlie jumps from the ceiling and grabs the person before stabbing him in the neck.  
He tears the knife out and throws it at another soldier. Charlie runs over to them, jumps on them before taking the knife out of their chest and stabs them in the eye before taking their assault rifle and throwing it at another soldier.   
Charlie runs over to the wall and jumps off it, landing on another soldier, then grabbed one of his knives and cut his eye out.  
Danielle cut a soldier’s hand off with her sword, causing them to drop their weapon. Danielle then kicked them onto the ground and stabbed them in the neck. She holstered the sword and took her grenade launcher and started firing at the other soldiers.  
Colton blind fired at the soldiers then grabbed his bonesaw and stabbed one of them in the neck. He tore the bonesaw out and turned around, and was immediately met with an arrow in the shoulder. It knocked him back, as he put a hand around the wound and watched as four, familiar people, walked towards the group.  
“We weren’t expectin’ special forces!” Charlie yells out.  
“They never are.” Huntsman says.  
Charlie looked at the man with the rocket launcher. “You and me! Round two!”  
“Here we go again…” Danielle mutters, then firing the first shot.  
Soldier rocket jumps over to Charlie and he jumps forward as Soldier swings his crowbar, near landing. He swung with the crowbar and Charlie blocked with his led pipe. Charlie kicked him in the knee, pushed him onto the ground, took the crowbar out of his hand and started beating Soldier with it.  
Engineer hit Colton with his wrench, despite having a perfectly working metal arm to do so, knocking him against the wall. Colton got down as he took another swing, and stabbed him in the arm with the bonesaw.  
He tore it out and kicked Engineer before running to him and making a deep cut on his chest.  
Danielle jumped behind a table, dodging a single arrow in the process, and started to reload her grenade launcher. Once she was done, she looked over the table and it exploded, knocking her back onto the ground. As she got up, an arrow went right through her knee. She screamed in pain, as Huntsman walked over.  
He had a black bandana, with a blue and black bow. He wore a dark blue hoodie with a black vest over it, and a quiver on his back. He had black pants, and black shoes.  
“Watch it, dumbass!” Charlie yelled as he jumped onto Huntsman and tore off his bandana. Charlie used his weight to knock them both onto the ground, then quickly got up, and took a crowbar to the back of the head.  
Audric grabbed the napalm launcher, and elbowed Pyro in the face, then tore the napalm launcher from his hands, and hit him in the back of the head with it, then broke it over his knee.  
Pyro looked up at him and Audric tore the gas mask off his face and threw it aside and started punching him before he picked Zachary up and threw him through the front window.   
With Charlie on the ground, Soldier got onto him and pressed the crowbar against his neck. “Get him, Brian.” Soldier said through his mask.  
“Got it, Ethan.” Brian picked up his bow, and loaded one arrow in while walking around Ethan. Before he could pull back on the arrow, he got hit in the back of the bead with a person, knocking him onto the ground. Charlie grabbed Ethan’s neck and pushed him away. Charlie jumped off the ground and hit Ethan with his pipe, pinned him to the ground and aimed the shotgun at his head right before the ceiling windows broke.  
The S.W.A.T Team roped onto the ground and aimed their guns at the two opposing forces as more entered through the front of the building, and behind them, surrounding the group. “Everyone, put your weapons on the ground, take off your masks, and put your hands where we can see them!”  
Charlie put the shotgun closer to Ethan’s head. “How about y’all make m-”  
“Scout.” Colton said, with his arms up, looking at one of the S.W.A.T Team. He lowered his medical mask. “Do as they say…”  
Charlie hesitated before taking his leg off Ethan, dropping the shotgun, and taking off his mask. He put his hands behind his head and got to his knees.  
Once he did that, everyone else did it too. The S.W.A.T Team then handcuffed the team. “Don’t worry.” One of them said to Charlie. “We won’t tell anyone.”

Chapter 2  
The beginning…

January 17th, Tuesday.

Danielle looked out the window of the prison bus. She felt an overwhelming anxiety, only growing stronger and stronger the longer the ride went on for. “Okay.” She said. “I’m not sure how long I can wait.” She looked at Charlie, who was sitting next to him.  
“What? You excited?” Charlie smirks. “I am. Never broke out of a prison before.”  
“What? No, I’m on the verge of having a panic attack.” Danielle says. She looks around. “Where’s Colton?”  
“Front of the bus.” Charlie says. “I saw him seated next to Kira. At least we’ve got her back.”  
Danielle looked back out of the window, then at Charlie again. “Weren’t boys and girls supposed to be separated in different prisons?”  
“I thought so.” Charlie says. “But, there are girls on this bus too, so I guess not…” He looked down the aisle, then back at Danielle. “Hey, not to scare ya’, but uh… I’ve heard ‘rumors’ that girls are typically sexually assaulted in juvenile prisons. You might wanna watch yourself in there.”  
“I should be saying that to you.” Danielle says. She looks out the window. “Wouldn’t surprise me if you get in a fight first day we’re here.” The ground outside began to become covered in snow.  
“Oh boy, Canada.” Charlie says.  
“Kira, slight warning, girls in Juvenile Prisons tend to be assaulted. The guards here, they’re kinda fucked up.” Colton says.  
Kira turns to Colton then looks around, before leaning in. “Okay, between you and me, I’ve managed to sneak some…” She looks around again. “Weapons on me.”  
Colton smirks. “How many?” He whispers.  
“I’ve got something called a Ghost Knife, my necklace, and a Lightning Necklace I was told to give to Charlie by my Father. Even better, I’ve got some files with me as well, Mann Co. Files.”  
“Do tell.”  
Kira looks around and pulls something out from under the chair with her foot. “I originally had this in the back of my shirt, but before I got changed into this, I got the chance to put this thing under the seat.” Kira bent over and picked up the folder and put it in her lap. “Goddamn, I wanna get out of these handcuffs so bad. Okay, I was told these things were designed to divide and conquer, meaning if we fight these things, we have to stay as close together as possible.” Kira hands the folder to Colton. “Take a look through this and don’t let anybody see it.” Colton opens the folder and starts looking at the papers inside as Kira looks through the window next to him. “Where the fuck are we going?”  
Colton looks through the window. “Oh, uh, Canada. That’s where Starlight’s Juvenile Prisons are, for some reason.” He looks at Kira. “I was here one time when I first created this team, it was where we got some of our weapons, I’m only gonna tell you this, the snow isn’t a stereotype. Not anymore, at least.”  
“What do you mean by that?” Kira asked.  
“Basically, in 1971, it started to snow here, hasn’t stopped since. Only good news is that it’s too hot, so the snow never manages to incase people in their homes. Even in winter.”  
“So, the weather here is only snow.”  
“Yep.”  
“Damn, I wanna melt all of this snow.” Zachary says. He turns to Ian, who was sitting right next to him. “Hey, where the hell are we going?” He asks.  
“Prison.” Ian says. “Juvenile prison, in Canada.” He sat there with his arms crossed and looking at the front of the seat. He turned to Zach. “Olivia let them take us because she didn’t want to get caught using children in her work force.”  
“Yeah, tell me something new.” He looked out the window again. “First, she forces us to do her work, then she expects us to take the fall for it. I’m not doing that shit.” He turns back to Ian. “First chance I get, I’m getting the hell out of here.”  
Ian looks at the front of the bus. “Yeah, that chance’ll come quicker if we work with them.”  
“Who?”  
Ian looks back at Zach.  
“No.” He says. “I’m not working with them, one of those fucking kids gave me more bruises than I got in training, then another one pointed a gun at Ethan’s head.”  
“You wanna get the hell out of here or not?” Ian asks. “You wanna leave, we gotta work with them.”  
“Ian, I’m not sure how I feel about this.” Zach says.  
“Okay, okay, listen, take some time to think about it, but we might need to do this. Just once.”  
Zachary looks around. “Okay, I’ll take some time to think about it.” He says, reluctantly.  
“Good.” Ian keeps looking down the aisle.  
Eventually, the bus stopped and the guard got up. “Okay, everyone, get off the bus in a single file line, back to front!”   
The back of the bus got off and started to walk to the front.  
Charlie and Danielle looked at each other. “Well.” Charlie says. “End of the line.” He and Danielle get up and start walking toward the front of the bus. Charlie steps out and looks at the area around him. Snowy, and looks like a prison. Just what I expected. Charlie kept following the other kids into the building.  
After a bit of walking, Charlie was taken to his cell and Danielle was taken to the same one. Charlie chuckled. “Guess they didn’t have the money to make a girl’s prison. Guess we’re cellmates until we can find out how the hell to get out of here.”  
“I wouldn’t say that too loud.” Danielle says. She sits on the bed on one side of the room. “Christ, these things are not comfortable. These guards are watching us closely, chances are, they know every little thing you’re saying.”  
“I don’t really care.” Charlie says. “They can do whatever they want.” Charlie sits on the bed on his side of the room. “And I’ll do whatever I want.”  
“Not the best mindset to have, but you go along with it.” Danielle says. She groans. “When do you think we’re getting lunch?”  
“I dunno.” Charlie says. “All I know is that when we do, we gotta find Colton and the rest of the team, come up with some sort of plan.” Charlie walks over to the iron bars and looks at the cell block. He looks back at Danielle. “Until then, we best keep away from mentionin’ any plans to escape, Juvenile Prison guards aren’t the best type.” Charlie walked over to his bed and laid down. “We best just keep to ourselves until we do escape, whenever the hell that is.”  
Danielle nods and leans against the wall.  
“I’m telling you, when they come, it’ll be the apocalypse.” Kira says. “There won’t be any going back, that’ll be it.”  
Colton put the file on the bed. “Anything else you learn while here?”  
“Yeah, you remember when I told you about Australium and how they shot the last of it into space?” Kira asks. “Well, basically, they have a new power source which is far more unstable than Australium.” Kira leans in, next to Colton’s ear. “Xen Crystals. They’re dangerous, they’re unsable, and they’re being used to power everything Olivia’s been working with for god knows how long. I’ll tell you more about it at lunch.”

It was nighttime. The sky was dark, though New York was bright.  
The girl ran into the back alley. Nobody but her eve went back here, in the years she’d been goin back here, she hadn’t seen a single person walk back here, despite the dumpster always being full. The girl sat down on some cardboard and opened a wallet.  
The girl only faintly remembered her parents, last time even seeing them was when she was four. She didn’t remember why she was where she was, or how she got there. All she knew was that she was there, and survival was something she’d have to fight for.  
There was a credit card, an I.D Card, and other belongings, though no money. The girl didn’t know what a credit card even was, she’d never even seen one before, so she left the wallet on the ground. She laid down on her cardboard bed, and closed her eyes. A few minutes later, she heard a person walking down the alley. The girl opened her eyes and grabbed a broken beer bottle and pointed it at the guy walking down.  
He put his hands up. “Okay, okay…” He says. “Put that down, I’m just looking for my wallet.” He slowly steps closer as the girl steps back. “It doesn’t have anything inside that’ll be of use to you” The girl kept backing up to her cardboard bed. “Where are your parents?” The girl stayed quiet as the man picked up the wallet. She let go of the hobo knife. “Do you even have parents?” He asked. The girl kept saying nothing. “Do… Do you speak? Do you understand what I’m asking you?” The girl didn’t understand any of it, so just didn’t respond. “My god, how did you make it this long without being kidnapped?” He muttered to himself. “Stay here, I’ll be back.” A few minutes later, he was back, walking down the alley again, with a box and a bottle of water. He sat the bottle down in front of the girl and she quickly snatched it and started to drink from it. The guy sat the box down and then sat the box down as well, then opened it.  
It was a pizza box, extra cheese, stuffed crust, with pepperoni and italian sausage toppings. “Go on.” The guy said. He took out a slice and handed it to her. “Eat it.” After a minute, the girl ate.  
This went on for another two weeks, with the guy constantly coming back every two days with food and water, until he came walking down with nothing. Instead, he motioned for the girl to follow him. At this point, he knew she didn’t understand english, or at the very least, had an extremely limited grasp of the language. The girl got up and followed him. At the end of the alley, there was a car. He got down to meet he at eye level. “I don’t know if you know what I’m about to tell you means, but I can give you a home. By the looks of things, you’ve never had one.” He walked to the car and opened the back door. “Get in, I’ll take you.”  
Still, the girl didn’t understand what was being said, but climbed in, curiously. After a while of driving, the car stopped. They were in front of a nice looking house, though it wasn’t all too big. It was one story, and they were pulling into the garage. The guy stepped out and opened one of the doors for the girl and she crawled out.  
In the months following, she learned to be far more human. She was taken to school, was able to eat food whenever she had need for it, was able to shower, and was even given a name. It was perfect.  
But it wasn’t what I needed for her. It’s not that I need her - specifically. I need her for what she can give me. What only she can give me.

The girl crawled into bed and closed her eyes, and started to sleep as she’d done every other night. Once she dozed off, she heard a voice, as a figure started to walk towards her in the dark. It was the only thing she could see perfectly, as though he was the only lit object in her sleep.  
“Ms. Calhoun.” He said. “This, I do believe, is the first time we have ever met face to face. You do not know who I am just yet, though I assure you, you will in time.” He took a step back as her stepfather appeared. The man turned to him. “I know this is the life you’ve worked so hard to get.” He turned to the girl. “I do intend for you to have it, but not with him. I will have to leave you on the streets for just a bit longer.” He walked closer to her. “I do hope you don’t follow the same path Ms. Leona did, as she has proved herself quite troublesome.” He took another step back. “I do hope Mr. Shouldenberg does find you soon. I have the pieces laid out, I just need my pawns to put them together. You are one of them. Oh- and just a tip, before I go… In 1983…” He put up a finger. A single one. “Show them your face.” He starts to fade away as her vision goes white. “In time… People will know your name… Danielle.”  
Danielle opens her eyes and, to her immediate confusion, looks up at the sky during sunrise. She gets up off the hard, concrete ground and looks around her. “What… What the fuck?” She asks herself. Quickly, she realizes what had happened. Danielle immediately fell into a panic attack and against the wall, gripping her forehead, on the verge of tears.

Charlie puts his tray on the lunch table. “How the hell are we getting out?” He asks, as Danielle sits down.   
“Charlie, I get it.” Colton says. “You wanna get out of here, but we have more important things to discuss.”  
“What? Shit relating to the job?” Charlie asks. “We’re stuck in juvenile prison, we can’t get the fucking job done if we’re stuck here.”  
“Charlie.” Colton says, with a stern voice. “Calm down. This is important.”  
Charlie takes a breath and sits down. “Okay, what is it?”  
Colton looks at Kira. “Go ahead.”  
Kira looks at the group. “Mann Co. has a new source of energy after the last bit of Austrailium was launched into space. They’re using-”  
“Xen crystals.” Someone says as they sit down next to her. “My name’s Ian, you fought me and my friends back at the school and Mann Co.” Some more kids sit down with the group. “I’m the one who threw the gas can.”  
“As if I couldn’t tell by your arm.” Colton says.  
“No time for introductions.” Charlie says. “Let’s get to the point, the nine of us want to get out of here, and you think giving us information is gonna make us help you.”  
“We want to work with you.” A darker skin kid said. The tip of his hair was blond, though the hair closer to his scalp was black. The kid wasn’t full black, looked more like a mixture. He had braces and one small scar on his cheek. “Olivia didn’t give us a choice but to work with her, we don’t even know our own parents.” He said as Ian looked at him, smiling. “I want to help you get your job done just as much as you do, just for different reasons.”  
Ian nodded. “Knew you’d come around, Zach.”  
Charlie looked at the younger kid. “Okay, who are you?”  
“Ethan.” He said. “Soldier, the kid you pinned to the ground with a shotgun.”  
Charlie chuckled. “No hard feeling?”  
“You can all introduce ourselves later.” Colton says. “If we want to get the job done, we have to get out of here, and soon, at that.”  
“We need to take a look around the building and come up with a plan of sorts, maybe even taking out the power.” Kira says. “How do we do that? Simple.” Kira reached into her pocket and pulled out a necklace, put it on the table and slid it over to Charlie.   
“H- Holy shit!” Ethan said. “The lightning necklace is real?” He looked at Kira. “Does that mean the rest of them are, too?”  
Kira grabbed hers and pulled it out from under her shirt. “I’ve had experience with these things for three years now.” She looked at Charlie. “Don’t put that thing on until tonight.” Kira looked at the group. “What information can you give us?”  
Zachary sighed. “Okay, the Xen Crystals.” He says. “They are powerful, Olivia’s using small bits of them to power the robots she has, thing is, you have to go to Xen to collect them. They’re doing their next run on Saturday, meaning if you want to exhaust them of all the resources they need, we can shut down that portal. Permanently.”  
“Yeah… About that…” Ian says. “You can shut it down temporarily from either side, though to shut it down permanently, it has to be shut down from Earth and from Xen. Once it’s shut down on Xen’s side, only one more person can travel through the portal before it’s shut down. Permanently.” Ian looks at Colton. “You’re the medic on this team, right?”  
Colton nodded.  
“Okay, I have an idea, you were attacking Mann Co. for Medi-Gun Blueprints, we know, but anything you’ll find in there is outdated. We can steal some Xen Crystals, and develop the Medi-Gun you were working so hard to get.” Ian looked around. “We could actually build it right now, all it’ll take to power that thing is one crystal shard, and I’ve got five in my cell.”  
Colton nods. “I’m guessing you know how to build stuff. Alright, we’ll get working on that when we can, I think we’ve been talking long enough that freetime might be soon enough. Take some time to look around the building, we’re leaving as soon as possible.”  
“Freetime, everybody!” A guard yells.   
Colton smiles. “Ian, come with me to your cell, we’re gonna get to work. Everybody else, you know what your tasks are, right?”  
Everybody else nodded.  
“Good.”

Pauling drives towards the school. In the distance, she could see it, ambulances, police vehicles, everything. She wasn’t worried, with Charlie, Colton, Danielle, Audric and Kira, any hostile entering the school wouldn’t last very long. She knew from experience. However, curiosity did grow as she got closer and saw the gaping hole in the front of the building. Pauling parked her car outside and walked towards one of the officers. “Morning, officer, what… What happened here?”  
“Fortress Frontline and some other kids had a fight here. As of now, they’ve all been arrested and we’re checking to make sure each of the students are safe. As of now, only four possible casualties have been reported. Charlie Franklin, Audric Hiltner, Danielle and Colton Shouldenberg, all of which are foren exchange students.”  
Pauling nodded. “Yeah… Um, I work here, can I-”  
“No, the building is shut down for the rest of the week.” The officer says.   
“Okay, okay.” Pauling says. She nods. “Uh- I’m gonna go home then…” She walked back to her car got it and started the vehicle.

“Foren Exchange students?” Zachary asks. “Where are you from?”  
“New York.” Charlie says. “We needed some sorta cover, bein’ students worked perfectly, except, you see the issue with that,” Charlie looked at Zach. “Right?”  
“No, do explain.”  
Charlie looked away at the people playing sports. “Basically, we all ran away from our parents. Mine were abusive, Danielle is Colton’s Step Sister, they were in Kansas as well, and Kira, well, I’m pretty sure you know she’s Olivia’s sister.”  
“Yeah.” Zach says. “You got any plans yet?”  
Charlie looks at him. “Only thing I’ve come up with is to start a riot at lunch tomorrow.”  
“Why lunch?”  
Charlie smirks. “I have some experience in that regard.”  
“Everyone, go back to the cellblock!” A guard yelled.   
Charlie nodded. “I guess I’ll see you there.” Charlie says.  
A few hours later, Charlie steps into the cell as the lights in the cellblock are all turned off. Danielle was already there, laying in the bed on her side of the room. Charlie walked over to his and sat on it, taking the necklace out from his pocket.  
“You know what that thing does?” Danielle asks.  
“I’m about to find out.” Charlie answers. He puts the necklace on and blinks.  
When he opens his eyes, he was in a completely different location. It was a forest. It was raining and the only light was electricity going up from the ground into the leaves on the trees. Then it started to go from the ground to the sky, and started getting closer and closer to Charlie to the point it looked like a wall surrounded him. Then, a person walked through the wall of electricity.  
He was bright skinned, didn’t look old, but didn’t look young either. His hair was brown and his entire eye glowed blue. He wore black robes with blue, glowing linings and black pants.  
“Mr. Franklin.” He says. “So, Ms. Ensley did give you the necklace, I see. Good.” He crosses his arms.  
“Who are you?” Charlie asks. “Where the hell am I? What’s going on?”  
“This, I guess you could call it, a pocket dimension. Time doesn’t pass here. Each necklace comes with it’s own pocket dimension, each one with varying designs.”  
“Wait, you said ‘necklace’. Does that mean I’m in the Lightning Necklace?”  
“Not exactly, no. We aren’t in your mind either. You see, each necklace is sentient, these pocket dimensions serve only one purpose. It’s a safe haven for each of the necklace users, a place where they can test out it’s abilities. Originally, I was only going to tell you this, and send you back on your way, as I can see you are currently stuck in prison.” He walked closer to Charlie. “However, you and your friends… There is something about all of you. The only thing I can say is to not trust our mutual… ‘Friend’. He wants you and Ms. Shouldenberg for something, and we aren’t quite sure what his endgame is. When you fight him, two or three weeks from now, be careful. He is strong, brutal, and without mercy.” He takes a step away from Charlie. “I will leave you to your actions and consequences. You will soon realize the power of this necklace.” The electricity nearby him slowly started to fade away and he blinked once more.  
Charlie opened his eyes and he was back in the prison cell  
“What happened?” Danielle asks. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”  
Charlie takes a breath. “I think I did…”  
Suddenly, the fire alarms start blaring and each cell door opens and other kids start running out of their cells.  
Charlie and Danielle look at each other. “Okay, firstly, we need to find the team.”  
The two run out of their cell into the cellblock, and guards are already being beat down by the students. Charlie grabs Danielle’s hand. “Come on! To the cafeteria!”  
The two get there, while the rest of the group had just got there.  
“Charlie! Danielle!” Colton yells.  
“Kira, was this you?” Charlie asks.  
“No, I was in my cell with Colton!” She says. “I saw some guards running down to the armory, if we’re lucky, that’s where they have our-” A random kid ran over to Kira and tackled her. They both fell to the ground as the kid start choking Kira.   
Ethan kicked the kid then Audric grabbed and threw him. “Me and Colton will grab our weapons, the rest of you, try and calm this situation down!”  
“Okay, try and call Pauling, or something!” Colton turned to Audric. “You know where the armory is?”  
“Yeah, down here, follow me!” Audric turned and started running as Colton followed.  
Charlie turned to the rest of the group. “Okay, for now, Kira’s in charge, Ensley, the hell are we doing?”   
“Uhh…” Kira looked around. “I don’t know who to side with here, the children or the guards!”  
“How about neither!” Charlie yells. He runs over to a table and jumps on it, does a backflip and kicks a kid in the back of the head. Charlie grabs him and starts choking him on the ground right before another kid pushes him onto the ground.  
Kira jumps on the kid and puts him into a headlock as Charlie starts punching the other.  
“Charlie!” Danielle yells.   
Charlie turns around and she tosses him a pipe she picked up. He catches it and hits the kid one more time with it, knocking him to the ground.  
Danielle looks around for a weapon of sorts before she’s grabbed from behind and a kid throws her onto the ground. He tries stomping on her head though she grabs his foot and elbows him in the knee, causing him to fall to the ground. She grabs him from behind and punches him in the nose.  
Charlie jumps off the wall and does a spin, hitting one of the guards in the process. Charlie tore off his helmet as he grabbed a taser. He hit Charlie with it, but rather than injuring him, the electricity ran up his arm. Charlie watched it before he looked at the guard. “Out of order, eh?” He grabs the guards arm, gets up, and pulls it out of socket and grabs the taser.  
Colton runs over and breaks the window on the door. “We have to keep the other kids from getting in here!”  
“We have a sticky bomb launcher, you say that…” Audric reaches in and opens the door. “Like it’ll be difficult.” The two step in and Audric closes the door behind them, then locks it. “Okay, we better hurry.”  
“Yep!” Colton says, grabbing only the holsters for his weapons. “We don’t have the time to get suited up! Grab your weapons, grab your masks, and leave!” He runs over to a speaker phone on the desk he picks it up and hears the announcement sound go off outside. “Charlie, Danielle, Zachary, the rest of the group, I need you to get down here, now!” Colton puts the phone back and the announcement sound goes back off. “Hope they got that.” He runs over and grabs the holsters for his weapons then puts on the medical mask as knocking on the door happens.  
“Hey, we’re all here!” Charlie yells. “Let us in!”  
Audric runs over and opens the door. The other seven quickly get in and Ethan locks the door behind them.  
“Okay.” Colton says. “We don’t have time to get dressed, grab your weapons, and grab your masks, and quick, we’re leaving! Now!”  
“No!” Danielle says. “We need the rest of our suits, they have our armor in them! The more armor we have, the more combat effective we are!”  
Colton looks at Kira.  
“We might not have time later.” She says.  
“Okay.” Colton says. “Everyone, get dressed! Zachary, make yourself a makeshift flamethrower!”  
The group grabs their suits and starts dressing into them.  
“Colton would tell us to not be lethal if we actually gave a shit!” Charlie says.  
“Yep!” Danielle, now fully dressed, takes the sticky bomb launcher and starts firing around the room. “Once we’re out of here, I’m detonating these.”  
Kira lifts the scarf over her face and looks around the room. “I think we’re all ready!”  
Charlie cocks the shotgun and looks at one on the wall. “I will be in a second.” He says. He puts his lever shotgun on his bag and walks over to the wall. On the gun racket, there was one, side by side, double barrel shotgun. Charlie takes it off and examines the weapon. The barrel was longer than his entire torso, while the stock added to that, making the entire weapon almost as long as his body, only about an inch or two smaller. “Big. Fucking. Gun.” Charlie says. He loads to shells into the shotgun. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s fucking go!” He yells, enthusiastically.  
Danielle starts planting bombs on the walls. “You guys go, I’ll be out in a second.”  
Charlie nods. “Gotcha.” Charlie walks over to the door and kicks it open.  
“Shit, he’s got a gun!” A kid yells.  
Charlie immediately fires off one shell; the shot kills multiple children, injures even more, and almost knocks him off his feet. He puts the dual barrel shotgun on his back again and starts running, as he takes the lever shotgun out, as the other start to walk out of the room.  
Audric takes the machine gun and just starts to blind fire at the crowds of rioting children.  
Colton runs over, and lowers Audrics gun. “Don’t we have Non Lethal ways of dealing with people?”  
Ethan grabs a kid, throws him over his head, onto the ground, pins him to the ground with his foot, and blows his head off with the shotgun. “No. Just guns, melee weapons, and more guns.”  
Zachary takes a swing with his axe and cuts of a kid’s head.  
Danielle shuts the door to the armory. “Back away!” Everyone starts to back away from the armory and Danielle detonates the bombs. Immediately, she’s knocked back onto the ground. She looks at the now destroyed room.  
Danielle got up and put the detonator away, and took the sword off her back, and started charging at the other children.  
“Dan, wait!” Colton yelled. “Goddamn it.” He watch Zachary light a molotov and throw it at a group of children. Immediately, all of them screamed as the cocktail hit and burned them alive. Colton groaned. “Fuck it.” He took the Uzi off his back and started to fire at the group of children.   
One runs up behind Colton and hits him in the back of the head with a tray, knocking him onto the ground. He got on Colton and started choking him. Colton grabbed his bone saw and stabbed the boy in the neck. He got up and looked around the cafeteria, and looked at Audric, Brian and Zachary, the only ones still in the cafeteria. “That’s all of them here, get the situation sorted somewhere else!”  
Charlie walks into one of the cell blocks, to see a pile of guard’s bodies lit on fire, other guards hung, and others simply being tortured.  
“Hey! One of them’s here!” A kid yells out.  
Charlie smiles under his mask and loads two shells into the Dual Barrel Shotgun as the other kids raise the side arms they stole from guards at him, lit molotovs, or drew their knives, or any melee weapon they could find. Charlie closed the shotgun and started charging right as one screamed.   
He fired both shots, put the gun on his back and took out his dual pistols; running up the stairs, he blind fired as a kid threw a molotov. Charlie jumped off the stairs and grabbed onto the rail and climbed into the second floor as the molotov hit another kid.  
Charlie grabbed his pipe and ran up to somebody and hit them in the head with it. He dropped the pipe, grabbed the kid and put him in a headlock, holding one of the pistols in his right hand. He started firing at the other kids, who shot the one he was holding hostage, but didn’t kill them.  
A child threw a molotov cocktail at Charlie and he threw the kid against the wall, then jumped over the railing, letting the molotov kill the kid.  
“Calm down with the fire bombs!” He yelled. He grabbed a kid and stuck their eyes. “I’m not fucking fire-proof!” He kneed the kid in the nose. “What do you think I have!? Fucking plot armor!?” He started sprinting as he reloaded the DB shotgun and stopped when a child yelled.  
“Watch out! Molotov!”  
Charlie caught the molotov before it hit him this time, and everyone stopped what they were doing in pure surprise he could do that; including himself. He regained his senses. “Not this time.” He did an over under throw with the molotov and it hit one of the children causing them to immediately scream in pain as they were burned alive; just like all of the others when the fire hit them.  
Charlie ran up the stairs and shot one of the kids in the chest at point blank, blowing him in half. He grabbed an unlit molotov off the ground and threw it at a kid. He ran up and hit them with the pipe again, before grabbing them by the foot and throwing them over the railing.  
Charlie then jumped off, seeing the kid was still alive, and pinned him to the ground with his foot.   
The kid started crying. “Please, please, let me go! I- I’m just trying to get out of here! Please!”  
Charlie starts laughing. “I love it when people like you beg.” He blows the kid’s head off with the shotgun.  
Charlie took his foot of the boy and looked around the room. The guards on the ground were all staring at him, expecting him to do something. Charlie took steps towards them. “You alright?”  
“Yeah…” The Guard said, followed by a pained grunt. He looked as though he was bleeding out. “I don’t know about anyone else, though…” He reaches for a keycard. “For any room that’s locked here… This should open it.”  
Charlie grabs the keycard. “We’ll get the situation taken care of. You stay here.” Charlie walked out of the cellblock reloading all of his weapons.  
Danielle ran down the hallway to him. “Where are you going?” She asked.  
“Cell Block A’s empty, going down to Cell Block B.”  
“Already taken care of, only one left is Cell Block D, biggest cell block.”  
Charlie nods. “Got it. Let’s go.” He starts running to the cell block and Danielle follows.  
When they get there, everybody else was already there. Zachary had a lit molotov in hand, and everybody else had their primary weapons.  
Colton nods. “You all ready?”  
Charlie nods. “Don’t really give a shit, to be honest.” He puts the keycard over the scanner, and the gate opens.   
Audric starts firing at everyone in the room, mowing them all down, some were even armed.  
A kid threw a molotov and Zachary, with a swing of his axe, broke the bottle while it was still in the air, before firing at the kid who threw it with his flair gun.  
Ethan grabbed a kid and put him in a chokehold with his crowbar, and Charlie blew the kid in half with his DB Shotgun. “Get down!” He yelled.  
Ethan ducked and Charlie shot another kid with the shotgun. It didn’t kill Him, so Ethan got up and hit him with the crowbar, and he fell over the guard rail.  
Danielle fired her sticky bomb launcher once more before getting hit in the back of the head with a pipe. Colton’s bone saw went straight through the kid’s chest, and he fell to the ground.  
Colton lowered a hand to Danielle. “Get up!”  
Danielle took his hand, he helped her up, and she grabbed her detonator. “Step back!” She yelled. She detonated the sticky bombs, and the walkway to the second story of cells exploded and fell on some of the children.  
They all looked around, there wasn’t a single person left alive, except for them.  
Ian nods. “Good job, everyone.”  
“Pff, you say that like they stood a chance.” Charlie says. He starts walking out of the cell block. “Okay, let’s get the hell out of her-” Before Charlie finishes, a loud explosion, followed up by an even louder crashing sound is heard. Charlie takes out the lever shotgun. “Hey… Dan... that wasn’t you, right?”  
“No…” She takes out the grenade launcher. “...And I don’t like that.”  
It takes Kira second, but she immediately realizes. “Robots.” She says. “The thing we were talking about, they’re here. It’s finally happening.”  
The group walks to the cafeteria, and there’s a massive, gaping hole in the wall.  
Charlie starts walking to the large hole in the cafeteria wall.  
“Wait, we need a plan.” Ian says.  
Robots start coming in through the hole in the wall and immediately firing.  
Charlie fires once and jumps onto the table and fires again, and the rest of the team starts to do the same.  
“Looks like they already have one!” Charlie yells. He does a flip off the table and kicks one of the robots, then falls to the ground, while the robots is entire unaffected. They grab Charlie by the foot and throws him at the wall. They swing a sword and Charlie ducks underneath it. He jumps onto the robot and uses his own balance to knock it to the ground.  
Danielle stabs one of them in the chest with her sword, and tears it out. One fires an arrow at her, and she dodges, dropping the sword and pulling out her grenade launcher. She fires at the robot, blowing it to pieces, before putting the launcher away and grabbing her sword once more. More and more come in through the hole in the wall and the group immediately starts backing up while blind firing at the horde.   
“Fall back, fall back!” Colton yells.  
Charlie runs over to a hallway and takes his duel pistols out. “Go, go, go!” He starts firing and the other eight run towards the hallway. Once Danielle runs past, Charlie follows her. “Keep going, what’s the plan!?”  
“Get to the roof, find a helicoper, and get to Starlight!” Colton yells. They run into the security room, Audric grabs a shelf and pushes it in front of the door.  
“Get us the hell out of here, we don’t have much time!” Kira yells.  
Danielle grabs a chair and throws it outside a window. “Fucking run!” She yells as she jumps through. Everyone else runs through, Charlie being the last to jump through. Outside, three carrier tanks were open in the distance, and robots ran down to the prison, as a helicopter started to fly overhead.  
Ethan took his rocket launcher and turned on laser guidance and fired a single rocket at it. “Keep going, I’ll catch up!”  
The group kept firing at the seemingly endless wave of robots and ran up a platform of debris onto the roof.  
“Ethan, get up here!” Ian yells.  
Ethan fires one last rocket at the helicopter and it explodes this time. “I’m comin’, I’m comin’!” Ethan runs up the platform of debris.  
“Tell me one of you knows how to pilot one of these things!” Colton says.  
“Don’t worry, I got it!” Brian yells. He jumps into the helicopter, then runs over to the pilot seat. Everyone else jumps in and Charlie starts firing his pistols.   
“Oh shit, big fuckin’ robot, right over there!” He starts firing at a large robot, who was running like a gorilla, throwing the other ones around just to get them out of it’s way. It punched the ground as the helicopter started to ascend, and tore out a piece of concrete from the sidewalk. “Shit, oh shit, incomin’!” Charlie yells as the robots throws the concrete at the helicopter and hits the top blade perfectly and the helicopter falls back to the ground, and breaks through the floor once it touches the ground.

Charlie opens his eyes. The area around him was completely in ruins. In his hands, there was a blue, glowing sword which had sparks of electricity running along it. He got up off the ground and the sword shattered, then disappeared. “Guys!” He yells out. “Everyone alright?”  
“Barely!” Danielle yells back. She coughs. “Where are we?”  
“I think we’re still at the prison!” Ian yells. “Okay, we have an issue, I overheard earlier that they’re transporting robots to Starlight City through a train which should be coming up next to the prison, if it hasn’t already!”  
“No!” Charlie yells. “We have to get to Starlight, the place is probably in ruins by this point!”  
“We can’t afford to have any more hostiles there than what might already be there.” Colton says. “You and Brian will take care of the train situation, everyone else, we’re going to Starlight.” He looks around. “Come with me, we gotta get out of here.” He starts running up debris until he was out of what used to be the prison building. Outside, all the robots had left, the sun wasn’t rising and it was still nighttime. A train was heard behind the prison.  
“That’s the train, you two!” Ian yells. “Get on it!”  
“Gotcha!” Charlie yells.  
Brian starts running over to a vehicle and Charlie follows.   
“Ian!” Colton says. “We have to get work done on the Medi-Gun!”  
“I’ve one other thing to work on.” Ian says. “Okay, Danielle, you’re driving, we’re working on this.”  
“Uh, got it!” She says. Everyone else starts to run toward a police van.  
Brian drives the car as fast as it would go. “Franklin, you gotta get on that train as fast as possible! You got any ideas?”  
“I’ve got one!” He yells out. He opens the car’s door. “Get me as close to that thing as you can!” Charlie steps out of the car and hangs from the car door. “A little closer!” Brian drives a little closer to the train and Charlie jumps on, gripping the top of it. He climbs onto the top of the train. “Brian, I might need you up here!” Charlie yells.  
“Shit.” Brian mutters. “Okay, I’ll get around to the other side of the train, just wait for me, alright?”  
“Gotcha!” Charlie yells. Suddenly, his vision brightens then when it fades, he finds himself back in the forest.

Kira exits the elevator door and walks forward, down the hallway. She entered a code into the keypad on the wall. The door opened and Kira walked in.   
Olivia sat there at her desk. “Oh, hey.” She closes the laptop. “What do you need?”  
“I wanna talk.” Kira says. “What you’re doing is wrong.”  
Olivia grows a confused look on her face. “What is?”  
“I’ve seen the child soldiers.” Kira says. “How you took them from their families they’ll never even know because you took them away...” Kira walked over and sat down in a chair. “I know how you’ve secretly killed police officers, and it’s gotta stop.”  
Olivia holds back a smirk. “Oh, really? I uh…” She nervously chuckles. “I didn’t realize you knew about that.”  
“It’s gotta stop, this kind of work ethic isn’t right.”  
“Who the hell are you to tell me what is and isn’t right? There’s a group of children going after my head right now, I’ll do whatever I feel like I need to.” Olivia says. “If I feel like I need a team of expertly trained children to fight a group of almost expertly trained children, then I’ll do just that, and between you and me, they’re pretty easy to manipulate.”  
“If you’re not gonna stop it…” Kira gets up. “Then I’ll leave.” She starts walking away to the door.  
“You’ll be back.” Olivia says. “I’m sure of it.”

“Brian!” Colton says into the earpiece.  
“Yeah, what do you need?” He asks. “Kinda chasing down a train right now!”  
“Pauling’s asked where you and Charlie are, she should be on her way to you right now.”  
“Good, ‘cause we’re gonna need a ride back!” Brian says. “Talk to you later!” He opens the car door and keeps his foot in the acceleration, doing his best to keep the van as close to the train as possible.  
Charlie got down on a knee and lowered his hand. “C’mon, gimme your hand!”  
Brian jumps from the car and Charlie grabs his hand and starts pulling him up. Brian grabs onto the side of the train and starts pulling himself up, as Charlie lets go and gets up. “Hey, Brian, hostiles at that end of the train! You see ‘em?”  
At the end of the train, through one of the train cars, robots started climbing out and onto the top of the train.  
“Yep!” Brian climbs up and reaches for an arrow and pulls out his bow. “Run or shoot?”  
A single sound is heard and Charlie holds a blue, glowing sword in front of him. Electricity ran through it, and the sword was transparent. “How about both?” Charlie throws it into the air, then does a flip, and kicks the handle, launching it one of the robots, impaling it and it falls off the train, and Charlie lands on both his feet. “Fuck yeah! Been trainin’ for five months to do that!”  
Brian fires off a single explosive arrow and hits one of the robots perfectly, before running to the front of the train. Charlie takes out his dual pistols and starts to blind fire as he runs towards the front of the train.  
At the front of the train, Charlie climbs onto the pilot part of the train, and breaks the window and climbs inside. The controls were completely broken, and wasn’t even usable. “Brian…! The controls for this damn thing are broken! We’ve gotta find a way to derail fuckin’ thing!” He steps back and takes a look around. He looks ahead, they were quickly coming towards a wooden bridge. He climbs through the window. “Shoot at the bridge! Up ahead, something burning or explosive should do the trick!”  
“One won’t be enough!” Brian reaches for his quiver and pulls out three explosive arrows. He aims towards the bridge and fires all three.  
Once they hit, each one of them explodes, immediately causing the bridge to become unstable, and each explosion causes the bridge to catch fire.  
“Go!” Charlie yells. He and Brian run and jump off the train, landing in the snow. They both watch the train drives onto the bridge and it collapses as the robots keep firing. Ice broke off of the bridge and the front of the train hit the side of the mountain and kept falling. “You think that’ll finish them all off?”  
“Let’s hope so.” Brian answers. “I don’t want this biting us in the ass later.”  
“Yeah…” Charlie looks around. “Uh… How are we getting back?”  
“I heard Paulings on the way, might be a while though.” He sits down on the ground. “Better get comfortable.”

Chapter 3  
The Robot War

The news Broadcast went on, and the reporter started talking.  
“At around 8:25 Today, a full evacuation of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Verginia, Mishigain, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and whatever’s in Canada, all being states surrounding Starlight have been ordered to evacuate, as five minutes prior, it was confirmed that a Robotic Threat has entered the city. Civilians of Starlight have been ordered to evacuate to Mid Starlight as the Robotic Threat encloses from North, West, East and South Starlight. It is rumored that the attack originates from Starlight City’s Mann Co, and that Starlight’s infamous mercenaries, Fortress Frontline, were killed in the beginning of the attack, as their last known location was Canada’s Juvenile Prison, which was the first place these robots were spotted. Emergency Broadcast says that you have to bring an emergency supply of food, water, clothing, first aid kits, flashlights with extra batteries, and battery powered radios with you. Stay safe, more updates on the situation will be soon.”

1979 - December 5th  
Olivia parks her car in the driveway in front of her house and steps out. It was obvious that Jason and Kira were still awake because the lights in the house were still on. She opened the car door and stepped out, then walked to the front door.  
Olivia unlocked the front door and stepped in. She turned around, closed the door and locked it, then turned back around. A single man stood in front of her, he looked old, but his hair was still a brown color. His skin was pale as though he was a corpse. His eyes didn’t have color, they were just grey. He was wearing a business suit. “Ms. Olivia Mann.” He says.  
Olivia immediately screamed as the area around her darkened until only her and the man in front of her were visible.  
“Allow me to introduce myself, you, and other humans would know me by one name. Satan. I... have been watching you for quite some time now.” He had an old, raspy voice and spoke at a slow pace. “Ever since Dear Old Daddy died, you have been running his company magnificently, I must say, I am impressed. That is actually why I am here, my friends agree with me that you have limitless potential, so now we want you to do something. For us. In 1983, I want you to use a modified version of your father’s robot designs to launch an invasion of Starlight city, as you have moved here four years ago. Otherwise, we can give you a battle you have no chance of winning. I doubt I need to say this to a twenty year old woman like you, but after certain events that you have had relation to, that will be rather anti climatic, especially considering future events.”  
“So I do what you say or die.” Olivia says. “Why should I care?”  
The man walked closer and leaned into Olivia’s ear, automatically making her more uncomfortable. He started to whisper. “Because you do what I say, and I can bring back your father. You may not believe me, but I know how much you miss your father.”  
Olivia nodded. “Show me.”  
The man stepped back and nodded. The area lit up and it was completely different.   
The area looked alien and orange; orange, glowing crystals were scattered around the area, along with normal white crystals. Rocks, big and small, floating around in the air; by the looks of it, they were on one of the largest.  
The man walked over to one of the orange crystals. Out of nowhere, he laid an old man on the ground. “Your father, I’m afraid to say, won’t live very much longer without some sort of life support, as he has lived far longer than his body will naturally allow.” He walks over to one of the orange crystals as Olivia slowly and cautiously walks over to the body. “These Xen Crystals, as they’re called, are a very good power source.” He looks at Olivia. “Almost as good as Austrailium.” He hits the crystal twice, shattering it then picked up two of the shards. “Test them out for yourself. They’re powerful, they’re strong, and they can keep your father alive if you use them.” He drops the two shards on the ground next to Olivia. His skin turned red, his eyes yellow, and had horns on his head. “You have until 1983.”  
The area darkened again, then lit up back into Olivia’s house. The lights were off, and the only light in the house was from the moonlight outside. Olivia looked at the ground in front of her. Gray was still there, and the Xen Crystal Shards were on the ground next to her, and glowing. She took a second to compose herself.

Ian reloads the shotgun, and looks around. “That’s all of them, right?”  
“I think so!” Colton yells.  
A car pulls up and stops in front of the group. Charlie and Brian step out, followed by Pauling.   
“Nice work.” Charlie says, looking at the scattered pieces of robots.   
“How bad is the situation?” Brian asks.  
“Not sure.” Colton says. “All we know is that it isn’t good.”  
“Hold on.” Pauling says. “I’ll get the radio on.” She walks back to the car, gets in and turns on the radio.  
The Emergency Broadcast sound started to play. “The following message is transmitted at the request of local authorities. At 8:25 P.M. Eastern Time, a robotic invasion occurred at North, West, East and South Starlight City, causing significant damage and failure to power and communication systems in the surrounding areas. An immediate evacuation order has been authorized to any residence within a 75 Mile Radius, and Mid Starlight for any survivors trapped within the city. An onsight military has been dispatched to provide assistance. Make sure to bring an emergency supply of food, water, clothing, first aid kit, flashlights with extra batteries, and battery powered radios. Follow local evacuation routes, which have been marked by local authorities, and only use one vehicle. Do not return to the evacuation area until the all clear has been given. If you are not in the evacuation zone; stay where you are. If you are in the evacuation area, and have no transportation, locate your nearest police department, or military officer. Do not use telephones, or cell phones, except in the case of emergencies. Stay tuned to local news media outlets, for further details, and information on this situation.” The emergency broadcast sound plays once more.  
“Christ…” Kira mutters. “Olivia… What have you done…?”  
“We’ve gotta do something, and quick.” Charlie says.  
Colton looked at him confused. “Weren’t you and Danielle the ones saying ‘Fuck the city’ just last week?” He asked. “Furthermore, weren’t you and Danielle the ones blowing up police officers just two days ago?”  
“Well, where the hell else am I supposed to go? There’s no city to live in when the city is fucking destoried!” Charlie says. “And I’m sure as hell not going back to New York. Not after the last time I was there.”  
“I only killed those officers to get us off our asses.” Danielle says. She walks towards Colton. “Starlight isn’t a place I want to leave, and I’ll make damn sure they never have it.”  
“Well, we need to get to Mann Co.” Colton says. “And we gotta get there quickly.”  
“We’ll never get there on foot.” Ian says. “Not fast enough, at least. We need some kinda transportation, something.”  
“Ian’s not wrong.” Danielle says. “This entire city just turned into a war zone, we’re the only ones who know just what the hell is going on.” She groans and sits against the car, covering her face.  
“What about our bikes…?” Kira says. “They’re only one or two miles from here, and they’ll get us there in a quarter of the time walking will.”  
Danielle looks up at her, then Colton. “Yeah, yeah, she’s right.” She gets up and looks at Pauling. “You think you could get us there?”  
“I don’t have enough room for nine people in this.” She says. “Sorry.”  
“Doesn’t matter.” Charlie says. “We wouldn’t get very far in it anyway.” He looks down the street. “Only way to get to the bikes is walking.”  
Brian sighs. “Well then…” He takes the bow off his back. “What are we waiting for?”

Danielle walked over and sat against the wall in the back alley, once again on dry, yet stained cardboard. The moment found herself back in the city- homeless and alone- she immediately knew what to do, from new knowledge and past experience. Living off rain water- which it rained regularly where she was- and food thrown out in dumpsters.   
The first time she’d done it, she had no issues with it, but now, she realized how gross the dumpsters were, and the food inside. Though, she knew she couldn’t get away with robbing a store without some sort of weapon, as she, with her darkened, dirty, and smelly clothes, would stick out like a sore thumb trying to sneak into restaurants or fast food joints, as though it’d even be possible to begin with. She’d been taught not to trust anybody else, especially in a situation like this.  
She put her legs against her chest, wrapping her arms around them, and beginning to cry a silent sob, until she heard footsteps coming into the alley.  
She reached for a bottle and broke it on the wall and jumped up and pointed it at a kid.   
He had brown hair, green eyes and white skin. He was wearing a red backpack, blue flannel shirt over a plain, white one.  
Immediately, the boy put his hands up and took a step back. “Okay… Okay, take it easy…” He said, slowly and quietly. The two made eye contact for a few seconds. They both looked similar, almost identical. “Are you alone? Homeless?”  
Danielle nodded. “Why do you care?”  
Colton nodded and started stepping closer, causing Danielle to start stepping back. “My name’s Colton. Colton Sholdenberg. One year after I was born, my parents gave birth to another child, a girl. When she was four, she got kidnapped, and we haven’t seen her since. Due to them having a criminal record, they can’t adopt children anymore, and aren't physically capable of having children anymore.”  
Danielle took a second. “What does this have to do with me?” She asked.  
“You’re homeless. You’re alone. You’re scrounging around for food in dumpsters. You’re resorting to stealing. Nobody has to live like this, nobody should have to live like this.” He takes a step back and slowly puts his hands down. “I’m offering you a home. You can take me up on that offer, or you can stay where you are now.”   
Danielle takes a second of consideration. She drops the broken bottle on the ground, and it shatters. “Where?” She asks.  
Colton faintly smiles. “I’ll show you.”

Colton pries the bone saw out of the robot’s neck, and looks around. “That’s all of them, right?” He says, sounding exhausted.  
“Yeah…!” Charlie yells. “I think so!”  
Audric walks over to the garage door and knocks on it. There was no response. He looks at the group. “Guess nobody’s inside.” He gets down on his knees and lifts the door open. Inside, there was no light at all, and the area was large.  
Zachary lights a flair. “Alright, follow me, lemme know if you see your bikes.”  
Charlie nods and pulls out his lever shotgun. The group starts walking forward for a minute.  
“There! Right there!” Danielle yells. She grabs her motorcycle and gets on it. It was painted red, with a black demoman logo on the sides.  
Zachary shines the flair around her bike. “The rest of those yours?”  
“Yep.” Charlie smirks. He walks over and gets on his and turns it on. “Look around for a car or something. I’m gonna take this outside and wait for the rest of y’all, aight?”  
“Alright.” Colton says. He looks at Zachary. “Do as he said.” He walked over to his bike as Charlie drove down one of the isles and through the garage door, where he waited outside for everyone else.  
The rest of the group drove out on their bikes, followed up by the rest in a car. Charlie nodded and they all drove off.

The news broadcast plays once more, and the News lady is back once more. “We have updates on the Robotic Threat. For starters; Fortress Front is not dead. They were spotted just minutes ago looking for vehicles, their motives for getting said vehicles are unknown. Military has also been dispatched to help with the current situation, whether or not they will be working with or against Fortress Frontline is unknown. More coming soon.”

The group stopped the vehicles and looked at the Mann Co building.  
Ian looked at the group in the car. “Anything we should know before hand?”  
“Yeah!” Ian yells. “The Xen Portal room is under ground, we need to open the portal, have someone go through and shut it down in Xen, come back and shut it down permanently.”  
“Then how are they gonna get back?” Charlie asks. “If it’s shut down on one side, then they can’t go back through the portal.”  
“No, it’s a security protocol, both sides have to give the all clear for it to be shut down, so that nobody is stranded in Xen. There’s a group of Mann Co employees over there, and they have Xen Crystals with them.” Ian says. “I cannot stress how important they are, the Mann Co Employees have orders to be hostile to us. You get there, you kill them, you grab the crystal shards, press a button, and come back.”  
Charlie nods. “Got it.” He got off the bike and looked at the building, and sighed. “Well, better hurry.”  
The group runs down to the building’s parking lot, and immediately, Mann Co Employees start running out, firing MP5’s with grenade launcher attachments.  
Audric starts to open fire on the group while Brian pulls out and fires an arrow at a car. It burns through two cars, leaving behind a transparent, blue trail, and cuts through one soldier.  
“The hell was that?” Colton asks.  
“Collateral Arrow, tip’s hot enough to burn through almost anything!” Brian answers, firing off another arrow.  
Charlie runs over to one of the soldiers and blows his head off with the lever shotgun, throws it at another soldier, runs up to them and stabs them in the chest by igniting another sword, picked his shotgun back up and started firing the dual pistols.  
A car in front of him exploded, knocking him back onto the ground. A soldier grabbed Charlie and pulled him off the ground. He holds a glock to Charlie’s head and turns to the group.  
Brian had a Collat Arrow ready while the rest just stared.  
The soldier looked at them all and started backing up, before a knife went in his back. He screamed and fell to the ground, letting go of Charlie.   
He turned around and Kira stood there with her switchblade in hand. She nodded. “So that does work… Okay.”   
Ian ran over to the door and put in a code to open it, and the group walks in. After cautiously running through a few hallways, they got to an elevator and stepped inside, except for Kira. “You go on down.” She says. “I’ve got something to do. Danielle, give me your stickybomb launcher.”  
Danielle smirked and slid it across the ground to her. “Good luck, Ensley.” And the elevator door closed.  
Kira turned around and a small, blond little girl stood at the end of the hallway. She was holding a golden sword with diamond edges and a glowing, white handle. The gold was glowing, and the diamond was sparkling. She wore a green hoodie, a white bandana, and had strips of blond hair on the front of her jacket. She had a black belt going across her chest, and was wearing a blue skirt, with black and red shoes.  
“Hey!” Kira asked. “Who are you?”  
The girl motioned for Kira to follow her, and walked down the hallway. Kira started running after her, out of pure curiosity. Once Kira stepped out of the hallway, the girl was already walking up the stairs to the second story. Kira followed up as the girl stepped into the elevator, then when Kira got to it, the girl was gone again. Kira stepped in, and before the even pressed a button, the doors closed and it automatically started going to another floor. “Okay… Out of all the shit I’ve seen in the past year or two, this takes the cake for the weirdest shit I’ve ever seen.” The elevator doors opened and the girl stood at the end of the hallway.   
The bodies of Mann Co Employees were all over the hallway, some of the bodies were cut in half. Others were burned. Some of the were pinned to the walls by rebar, some even pinned to the roof with it.  
The girl pointed to a room, then walked inside. Kira followed her and opened the door. The girl was gone, and there was a single lamp shining on some papers.  
“Cleverly done, Ms…” A voice said. It was a male voice, the same one Kira had heard those few days ago. He chuckled. “But she’s not supposed to be here. As a matter of fact, you’re not supposed to be here.” Kira grabbed the papers, crumbled them up, and carelessly stuffed them into her pocket. “Ms. Ensley, get back where you belong, and forget about all of this. Until we meet again.” The area went dark, and when her vision came back, she was back on the first floor, and the elevator doors the rest of the group had just gone into had closed.   
Kira ran over to the elevator she had used before and stepped inside, pressing the button to go to the top floor. Inside, she checked to see if she still had the papers. Sure enough, she did. Three papers crumpled up in her hand. The elevator doors closed and she unfolded the papers and started to read them, as in this elevator ride, she’d be there a while.  
From the wording, Kira could tell it was written by Olivia. It was worded like Olivia was spying on someone who had been spying on her. Multiple photos of the man Kira had seen in the dream were on the papers. Pictures of him on Earth watching someone through windows, or the top of a building were there. Some even watching Mann Co Employees in Xen. She started reading as the elevator went up.  
‘Satan is usually seen watching Fortress Frontline. At first, why they were after me was unclear. It’s still unclear to me, though now, I have a feeling he had something to do with it, if not, everything to do with it. He’s even been watching four of the kids I took from their parents. Kira had an issue with it and left, still hasn’t come back. I miss her. But, I’m sure there is some connection between everyone I’ve caught him watching. All I know for sure is that we’re all pawns to him. He’s a chessmaster, and the only thing that any of us can do is exactly what he wants us to do. Whatever it is, I just hope he leaves Kira and Jason out of it.’

The elevator doors open and the group walks out. The room’s only light source was the massive, orange portal in the middle of the room, which looked like it was being powered by three generators attached to the ceiling. There was a door, which looked like it led to a staircase, which looked like it lead to a control room. There were garbage bags of Xen Crystal Shards, and a few larger crystals.  
“Yep…” Ian says. “There it is… The Xen Portal.”  
“Well… What do we do now?” Colton asks.  
“Whoever’s going just jumps on through, and should probably be ready to fight.” Ian says.  
Charlie looked confused. “Just like that?”  
Ian noddd. “Just like that.” He looked at Charlie. “I wanna go, but I’ve actually been to Xen before, don’t wanna stop you if you wanna try.”  
Charlie shook his head and stepped back. “Nah, I’m good.”  
Ian stepped forward and looked around. “If anybody wants to go to an alien dimension, now’s your chance.” There was no response. Ian chuckled and took the shotgun off his back. “Alright then.” He lowered the goggles and ran to the portal and jumped in.

The elevator doors opened and Kira walked down the hallway to Olivia’s door. The door was ajar, so Kira didn’t have to bother with any sort of code. She took the revolver from her leg and kicked the door open. Holding it in front of her, she moved through the room cautiously. She checked behind her; there was nothing. Kira slowly lowered the gun as she walked towards the desk. She searched through the drawers looking for a map of the building. She folded the map and put it into her pocket, and walked to the room her father was in before. The door was locked, so Kira took the revolver and shot the door handle, then opened the door.  
Sure enough, he was still there. Laying in bed, being kept alive by the crystal shards. “I’m here.” Kira says. “I’m here to finish what we started.”  
Grey smiled, and painfully pointed towards a desk on one side of the room. “Behind that… There’s… There’s a vent… It’ll take you to where you want to go... They won’t let you…” He coughed. “Destroy the filtering process without a fight…” He coughed even harder this time. “But that’s what you’re looking for… Isn’t it?”  
Kira moved the desk and found the vent. The cover was missing.  
“Thank… You…” Grey said.  
Kira nodded to her father and crawled into the vent.

Ian landed on the ground.  
“Shit, it’s Waid!”  
Immediately, Ian started firing his shotgun at the guard, then ran up to him and hit him with the back of the shotgun.  
Another guard ran up to him and tried to kill him with an axe. Ian got down, and the axe hit the wall of the Xen cave they were in, and quickly grabbed his wrench and hit the guard with it. He kicked the guard in the knee, grabbed the guard, then pulled out his pistol. He shot the guard as another one threw a grenade at Ian. He kicked the grenade away, then threw his wrench at another guard.  
One guard started calling for backup, and Ian ran up to him, grabbed him by the head and kneed him in the nose.  
Knowing another group would be following him, Ian walked over to the middle of the room and took off his bag. Searching through it, he pulled out a stand, and two parts of a chain gun.  
He put the two parts together and turned flicked the switch to turn on the Mounted Turret Gun.  
Ian closed the bag, put it on, and walked away as more entered through the door and got mowed down almost automatically. He walked to the control panel and pressed the ‘SHUTDOWN’ button.  
“WARNING.” The overhead voice said. “PORTAL UNSTABLE. CANNOT SHUT DOWN. PLEASE RECONFIGURE POWER DAMPENERS.” Ian nods and walks over to a door and walks down some stairs before walking back up, taking apart the MTG, and without putting the pieces away, walks back down the stairs.

Kira exits through the otherside of the vent. The soldiers in the room didn’t know she was there yet. The room was large, and had three stories.   
The first one was just a floor, with a few ladders leading to the second and third. The corners of the room had square rooms.  
The second and third stories were walkways between those four, square rooms. The second story took them into the rooms, and moved along creating a box shape.  
The third story’s walkways took them on top of the rooms, and the walkways formed an X.  
Kira was on the second. There were also four large, glass containers holding something that would take energy away from the Xen crystals. The robots had a smaller version of this to power themselves, so did everything else that ran off Xen crystals, though this was to power the entire building. Kira took the ghost knife out, then took a second to think about whether or not to do this loudly, or silently. I think loudly is the only way to get this done. She took the revolver out and aimed for one of the containers, then took her shot.  
The class broke and the liquid inside spilled all over the floor and an automatic overheard voice said something. “WARNING: BUILDING POWER IS AT 75%.”  
“Ensley! She’s here!”  
Kira jumped over a railing and shot at one of the guards who fired a grenade. She ran forward behind a pillar, then shot another container.  
“WARNING: BUILDING POWER IS AT 50%.” Kira pulled out the Ghost Knife and teleported back onto the second story. Someone fired a rocket launcher at her as she ran up to a soldier charging at her with an axe. They swung, and missed as Kira got down and stabbed them in the knee with her Switchblade, grabbed the axe out of his hand, and killed him with it. Holding it with both hands, she ran across the walkway as the soldiers across the room fired at her. She ran into the room and swung at somebody’s leg, and they dropped a shotgun. Kira tore it out and swung at their neck.  
Leaving the axe impaled in their body, she picked up the shotgun and started running again.

Ian opened the door and the soldiers immediately started firing at him. He was on the outside of the area. He could see the Xen sky, and the room he was looking for behind all of the soldiers. There were a few benches and tables around the area, as it was a place that they could stop and take a break. Ian set up the MTG.  
“I heard one of the Priority Targets were here.” A guard says. “Where is he?”  
“Hey asshole!” Ian yells. “How’s this for a target?” He flicked the switch and the MTG turned on. It made a few beeping sounds then started firing at the soldiers endlessly. Ian casually walked over to the door, whistling, as they all screamed, and a few even yelled at him.  
Ian opened the door with his keycard and stepped inside. There was a circular power generator in the wall, and the Xen Crystal holder was on the floor. Ian walked over and picked it up, then plugged it back in. A few seconds later, the overhead voice said something. “PORTAL 25% STABILIZED.”  
Ian sighed. “Time to do this three more times.”

Kira stabbed someone in the chest with a sword and tore the sword out, cutting their head in half. She threw the sword over the edge and took the soldier’s MP5, and used the grenade launcher attachment to destroy the 3rd generator.  
“WARNING: BUILDING POWER IS AT 25%.”  
Kira threw the MP5 and the lights shut off, and the red emergency lights turned on. With no more soldiers in the room, Kira took the stickybomb launcher and shot at the final generator, and started to walk back to the vent.

Rain poured on New York City outside the house. The cars drove by, not paying even so much as the slightest attention to the boy sitting on the roof outside.  
Charlie watched the cars pass as the rain fell, as the cars drove by. It was only last week he’d found out that his parents were the ones who paid for his sister to be killed, and his death was only collateral damage. Normally, he would question such a claim, but Satan was the one who told him. Of all people, if it was him, it’d have to be true, right?  
Just the thought of what his parents must’ve been thinking ran through his head, and it hadn’t left him since.   
He never hated his mother as much as he did his step dad, though he hated her for turning a blind eye for what he had done to the two.  
He’d beaten Charlie, and left him locked in the restroom for almost a week at a time, the only thing he’d been able to survive off of being sink water. He’d leave Charlie locked outside of the house for causing very miniscule problems. But it wasn’t how he was treated that Charlie hated him for. It was for Sara.  
She’d been sexually abused by Bruce, Charlie’s stepfather, locked in the refrigerator, and even the trunk of the car. She’d also been beaten, far more than Charlie had ever been, having bruises, and even scars on her body. At least, before she was murdered. About half a decade later, there probably wasn’t any skin left to be scarred.  
Charlie sighed and got up. He turned around and walked over to the window of his old room, which was still left open from the last time Charlie had ever been there, an entire year ago. He crawled through the window and into his old room.  
The room was the same way he’d left it. The bed was messy and stained, automatically reminding him of how he used to eat whatever leftovers were in the fridge. Now, he’d have to sneak into any restaurant and steal food from there, which was far more difficult, but far more rewarding.   
The closet door was still broken from one time Sara was thrown at it, and the door was broken from the time Charlie tried to lock his door, so Bruce- his step father- decided to break it to get in.  
Charlie hadn’t stopped for even a second to consider whether or not he should do what he intended to. His mind was set, and there was no changing it. He walked through the broken door out into the hallway, and the house looked exactly like he’d remembered it. Stains on the walls, one of the ceiling lights shattered, another one defective.   
There was a shattered photo on the ground of his older brother, Dallas. It immediately brought back the memory of seeing Dallas hung by a tree in the forest. The memory of how his Bruce’s treatment drove Dallas to commit suicide. Afterwards, Bruce only mocked him and Sara for grieving over his death, calling Dallas ‘Weak’ and ‘Pathetic’, saying that if he couldn’t handle simple punishment, he shouldn’t have been born in the first place.  
Charlie walked down the stairs which made a creaking noise; but it wasn’t heard due to the rain outside.  
Walked into the living room. His mother was in the corner, cowering in fear, as Bruce walked towards her with an empty beer bottle, the TV being the only source of light in the room.  
It was exactly what Charlie expected. If a kid wasn’t home for Bruce to beat, the next best thing would be his wife. Charlie sighed and took the pipe off his bag. “Hey, asshole!” He yelled. “Remember me!?”  
Bruce turned around and looked at him. Charlie lowered the mask and Bruce laughed. “I knew you’d come crawling back eventually… How’d being homeless go for you?”  
Charlie smiled and started walking towards Bruce.   
He swung the bottle and Charlie kicked him in the knee, grabbed the bottle and hit Bruce in the face with it, knocking the lit cigar out of his mouth. It shattered and Charlie grabbed one of the pieces of glass, and stabbed Bruce in the forearm with it. “Remember when you did that to Sara!?” He yelled. He punched Bruce in the eye, then kicked him in the ribs repeatedly, surely breaking a few of them. “Remember when you did this to me!?” He grabbed the cigar and put it in Bruce’s other eye. “Remember when you did that to me, my brother, and my sister!?” He put his foot on Bruce’s knee, grabbed Bruce’s foot, and then broke his knee.   
“Charlie…” Bruce started to say, starting to cough up blood. “I’m sor-”  
Charlie punched him in the throat, and grabbed him by the shirt, taking the pistol from his leg. “Spare the bullshit for Satan.” He took the shot and killed Bruce. Charlie dropped the body on the ground and turned around to his mother.  
She put a hand out to him and started shaking her head. “Charlie, please, I only had her killed to keep her away from what he was doing.”  
With a stern face, Charlie took the shotgun off his back. “Then you should’ve done better.” He smiled. “For all it’s worth, you were always the better of the two.” He aimed the shotgun and shot her, killing her on the spot. Without a care in the world for what he’d just done, he walked over to the stove and turned it on, then the oven, then proceeded to toss whatever he could find inside, then walked back up to his room.  
He grabbed the picture a picture of Dallas, and a picture of Sara, and put them into his bag, and left the house for the last time he’d ever see it.

The elevator door opened and Kira stepped out. “I’ve got the building power on the lowest level it can be, when whoever got through gets back, we’re taking the elevator up to the surface, and I’m blowing up the last container.”  
Colton walks towards Kira. “Shouldn’t be too long, we just got authorization from Xen’s side.”  
A few seconds later, Ian fell through the portal and landed on the ground. He was carrying two garbage bags of Xen Crystal Shards. He looked up at the group. “Alright, let’s take down this portal and get the hell out of here.” He dragged the bags across the ground. “These’ll last us about a decade, easy.”  
Danielle presses the button and the alarms start to go off.  
“XEN PORTAL SHUT DOWN ALL CLEAR: GRANTED. SHUT DOWN: IN EFFECT.”  
The portal turns from Orange to Blue, and something on the ceiling fires a red laser into it, and the portal starts to shrink.   
The group walks back to the elevator and go back up to the surface. When the get there, the announcements go on.  
“Kira, Kira, you can hear me, right?” Olivia says, sounding almost panicked. “It’s over, you’ve closed the Xen Portal, you’ve stopped us from making any more robots, you’ve won. But please, don’t destroy the last generator, it’s the only thing keeping Dad alive, please, I am begging you.” She sounded like she was on the verge of tears. “Don’t destroy it, it’s all we have left.”  
Kira looked around at the group, then pressed the detonator.  
“BUILDING POWER LEVEL IS AT: 0%. SHUTTING DOWN.”  
The emergency lights went off, everything that was still on went off. Kira inhaled, almost as though she was choking back tears. “Well…” She said, sounding like the was on the verge of crying. “I guess that’s it then…” She reaches into her pocket and grabbed her flashlight and turned it on.  
“We gotta take a break.” Colton says. “Take a few minutes to gather our thoughts and come up with a plan before doing anything else.”  
“Yeah.” Ian says. “Top of a building will be fine, I guess. Just seeing Starlight from up there, taking some time to think.”  
Colton looks at Ian. “How much of the medigun did we have finished?”  
“The tech is done already, you just need to finish your side.”  
Colton nods. “Right.”  
The group leaves the building, then drive off a bit with their bikes, then climb a fire escape.  
The group climbs onto the roof of an apartment complex, and Ethan stares at the city in awe. All the lights from buildings, and cars just simply amazed him. Colton walked over. “Is that everything you hoped for?”  
Ethan shook his head. “No. It’s far more than I hoped for.”  
About an hour had gone by, it had started to snow in the city, and Danielle was inside of the vacant building, staring at it through a window.  
Charlie walked into the room she was in without her noticing. “Whatcha thinkin’?” He asked, startling her.   
“Uh- Nothing.” She said. She kept staring out the window. Charlie walked over and leaned on the wall next to her. “Well, if you weren’t thinkin’ about anything, you wouldn’t be here, starin’ off into space, unless there was somethin’ in particular.”   
Danielle pushes herself off the window sill. “Just… Incompetence, I guess.” She says, walking over to sit on the couch.  
Charlie sighs. “Incompitent? What makes you say that?”   
“If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have lived on the streets for so many years.” Danielle says. “I wouldn’t have been home-” She stops herself. “They wouldn’t have left be behind as young as four.”  
Charlie looked skeptical. She was lying about something. He just wasn’t sure what it was. He sighed and walked over to the couch, and sat down next to her. “What happened to you when you were younger? What’s your life story?”  
She looked up at him, confused. “Why?”  
“Go on. Answer. What’s your life story?”  
Danielle stops to think for a second. “Stealing.” She says. “Murder. I was… I- I was abandoned by my parents at 4 years old, spent the next few years homeless. Then one with my bro- my stepbrother. Then three more years being simply the worst person I can be, killing several people.”  
“What makes you so different than them?” Charlie asks. “They were following orders for cash, we were following orders for cash. You stole to survive, you were only doing what you had to.” Charlie stood up. “We’re doing good here-”  
Danielle stood up too. “We murdered children. Children.” She said with an angry tone. “We are single handedly worse than child molesters,” Tears were starting to come to her eyes, and she was beginning to shout. “We are single handedly worse than the people who ruin children’s lives, the people who ruined my life, because we just ended them! Several of them!” Charlie grew a look of concern on his face as Danielle continued. “In the past day, we have destroyed families, failed to stop parents from being taken away from their children, in the past day, this entire fucking city went to hell, because that dumbass woman was dumb enough to think we, adolecent children, could take up the responsibility of saving a fucking city, of preventing something before it even happened, no, of simply killing the woman in charge of a company, that’s how incompitent we are! We can’t even fucking do that correctly! So don’t ask me why I feel incompitent, because we haven’t done a single fucking thing that makes us compitent!”  
“What did you say? Who ruined your life?”  
Danielle realizes she said something she didn’t intend to. “Uhm… Nothing… nobody.” She sits back down on the couch.  
Charlie stands there, confused. “What happened? And… Who did it?”  
Danielle takes a breath and looks up at him. Before she can speak, the door opens. “Charlie,” Ian says. He walks into the room. “I’ve got something to give you.” Ian walks towards Charlie holding two circular, black things. “These are what I’ve spent the last hour on, while Colton was working on the medical side of the medigun. These are the Wrist Mounted Glue Shooters.” He hands them to Charlie.  
Charlie examines the glue shooters while Ian continues. “There are triggers in the wrist part of the shooters, when the glue shooters are fired, the line is only cut when the rope is grabbed.”  
Charlie looked at Ian. “Is that it?”  
“They’re also strong enough to hold your body weight.”  
“So, you basically made knockoff Web Shooters?”  
Ian nods. “Yep. Put them on.”  
Charlie slides the glue shooters onto his wrist, and tightened the velcro straps. They fit comfortably around his wrist, and the Xen Crystals’ orange glow immediately drew Charlie in.  
On the roof of the building, Colton had a red, glowing liquid in a bottle. He’d used morphine, and managed to turn the Xen crystals into a dust by scraping it like he’d do pencil led back in fifth grade.  
Zachary walked over and looked at it, then Colton. “You sure that’ll work?”  
Colton looked up at him and smiled. “I have…” The smile faded into a blank face. “I have no idea.” He reached for a shard of glass on the ground. “Guess I should find out.”  
Zachary backed away before Colton cut his own cheek with the glass. He laid the shard on the ground and leaned into the liquid, and took a sniff of it. The wound healed and Colton placed his hand over where it was and looked up at Zachary. “Tell me you saw that shit.”  
“Oh yeah.” Zachary says. “I saw that.” Behind Colton, a building crashes and everyone on the roof turned around.  
Danielle gets up and Charlie walks over to the window sill. “Uh- What the fuck was that?” He asks.  
“Big robot.” Ian says. “We’ve gotta get there. Now.”  
Danielle nods. “Gotcha.” The two run over to the door. Charlie climbs through the window sill, and uses a glue rope to lower himself back down to ground level.  
When he got down, everyone else was almost done getting down the fire escape. Charlie got onto his bike and turned it on, just as everyone else had gotten off the fire escape.  
“What’s happening, what was that?” Colton asks.  
“Big robot, going to Mid Starlight. All you gotta know.” Ian says, getting into the car.  
“Well, let’s go, damn it!” Danielle says. “We don’t got time!” She turned on her bike, and the group started driving.

“Contact, contact!” A soldier yelled, as he started firing at the massive robot. It was only half the side of the Mann Co building, which was the tallest building in Starlight.  
The robot punched the side of a building, knocking it into the evacuation zone. A tank rolled out and fired a single shell at it, almost knocking it off its feet. It started walking toward the tank.  
“Oh shit, back up!” The soldiers in the tank started yelling. “Back up, back the f-” The group drove up onto the destroyed highway and watched the robot crush it under his feet.  
“Holy shit!” Charlie yelled. “Tell me y’all saw that!”  
Audric got off his back and took out his gun. “Oh yeah, we saw that.” He says. Audric starts to fire at the robot with the gun.  
Ethan starts using the rocket launcher, Zachary and Danielle try to avoid it, attempting to get to the civilians to help them away from the commotion. Charlie and Colton started firing any weapon they had, Ian started setting up a sentry gun, Kira shot at it with her revolver while trying to get to a higher elevation, and Brian used a grapple arrow to get to the top of a building.  
The robot picked up a car and threw it at Colton. He got behind a wall, and the car broke through and hit him. “I’m fine…!” He painfully got up. “Scratch that, I think I have a few broken bones!” His medical mask was torn, now showing his face. Colton grabbed his Uzi off the ground. “Ian, what do you know, man?”  
Brian got onto the top of the building. “There’s a Xen Crystal Power Generator on it’s back!” He yells. “Looks like a large one too!” He reached for his quiver, and fired an explosive arrow at it, only making a crack in the glass.   
“There’s got to be more than one of those!” Ian yells. “A full Xen Crystal can’t power something this large!”  
The robot turned around and hit the building Brian was on, running it’s hand through the entire thing. Brian, in his fall, fired a grapple arrow at the glass of one of the buildings. He grappled up and broke into the building. The robot did another swing, this time above him, tearing the roof clean off. Brian fired a Collateral arrow, and it cut through the robots arm. It didn’t seem to react, though.  
Charlie drops the magazines for his dual pistols and reaches for two more only to realize that he had no more pistol ammo. Only shotgun ammo. “Brian, you said it was on the robot’s back, right!?”  
“Yeah, why?”  
“Cover me!” Charlie dropped the pistols and started running towards the robot. It grabbed a piece of debris and threw it at Charlie. He did a roll of the ground, narrowly avoiding it, and threw himself into the air using the glue shooters. Charlie swung onto the roof of a building. The robot swing at the roof, attempting to knock him off, and/or, kill him instantly.  
Charlie jumped onto it’s wrist, and fired a glue rope at it’s arm. Charlie held on, then swung under the robot’s arm, then pulled himself towards it’s back. Charlie fired a glue rope to it’s head to make sure he doesn’t fall off, then he takes his lever shotgun out. Holding the gun with one hand, he shoots the glass again and this time, it finally breaks, though the Xen crystal was still inside.   
Without even knowing what would happen to him, Charlie crawls inside, and tries to push the crystal out. Immediately, he felt a surge of electricity run through him. It didn’t hurt, though. It felt more like a sudden boost in energy, rather than the painful electrocution he should be feeling.  
Charlie tries to push the crystal out, but it doesn’t work. Charlie crawls out, and holds onto the crystal while taking off his Dual Barrel Shotgun. He jumps, and fires both shells at once. The recoil knocks him feet away, straight through the glass of a building, as the crystal explodes. Charlie gets off the ground and starts running as he reloads the shotgun.  
The robot slides his hand through the building, right where Charlie was, knocking him out of the side.  
Charlie grabs onto a piece of debris while falling and jumps off, and swings down to the ground. “Okay, that’s one crysal!” Charlie looks at his suit.  
It was cut, blood had clearly leaked onto the black shirt under the jacket, and the pants, and he was missing one of his gloves, and his bandana had fallen off… Somewhere. There was also dust all over his clothes.  
Charlie looks at the robot’s hands. “Xen crystals! There are Xen Crystals in it’s hands!” He yells.  
Kira, now as high as she can get, runs up to the edge of a building. “Brian, you got an electric arrow!”  
Brian pulls one out. “Yep! Why?”  
“Shoot what I’m about to throw!” Kira throws something into the air at the robot, and Brian shoots it with an arrow. It impales what Kira threw, then the robot. It falls back into a building, then onto the ground.  
Without questioning what just happened, Charlie runs to the robot, motioning for Audric to follow.  
Charlie climbs into its palm, right before Audric does, and fires both shells into the glass surrounding the crystal. He starts to reload as Audric grabs the crystal and tears it out. Charlie gets off it’s hand, and it throws Audric through a wall.  
“Shit, Audric!” Colton yells. The robot gets up. “Okay- Audric’s down!”  
“One more, one more!” Ethan yells.  
The robot crouches down and flips a building over.  
“We need somebody to keep it’s palm open!” Ethan yells.  
Charlie climbs onto the roof of another building, and fired multiple glue ropes at it’s hand. Charlie holding onto all of them with both hands holds onto it as hard.  
Ethan fired a single rocket at the glass and it shattered. The robot pulled its arm, and it threw Charlie off the building. He fired a glue rope at his arm and fell to the ground, rolling right in front of the group, tearing the sleeves on his jacket a bit in the process.  
The massive robot stood in front of them. “I’m gonna destroy that last crystal, I need you guys to cover me.” Charlie said.  
Gunfire behind the group was then heard, right as Charlie took a bullet to the knee.

The soldiers point their guns at Zachary and Danielle. “What are you doing here?” One asks.   
“Please! We need help!” Danielle yells. “We can’t do this on our own!”  
“You’ve seemed to do well on your own so far.” The soldier says. “Keep doin’ that.”  
“We can’t for much longer, they’re sending another wave.” Zachary says. “You can trust me, I used to work with them.”  
“Why should we trust you? How do we know you were working with them?” The soldier asks. “Everything you’ve just told us could be a lie. As far as we know, you and your friends were the ones who helped in this whole operation to begin with.”  
Danielle stops for a second, remembering the man, and his instructions. How he put up a single finger and told her to do one thing. It’s the only way.   
“There’s nothing wrong with asking for help when you need it.”  
Danielle grabbed her bandana and tore it off. The soldiers were immediately surprised. “Please… We’re just kids...” Danielle says. “We can’t do this alone…”

Ian and Colton lifted the piece of debris off Audric.  
“C’mon, big guy,” Colton says. “Get up!” He takes out his Uzi and starts to fire at the wave of robots incoming.  
Audric got up, his bullet belt torn, his mask torn, and with several bruises and cuts on his boy.  
Charlie jumps behind a car to avoid getting shot by them, then starts shooting at the big robot in front of him. “Shit! Shit, shit, shit! We’re surrounded, we’re so fucking outnumbered, and we’re starting to run so low on ammo that I had to use a jar of Salt on them!”  
Colton took the medigun off his back, and started healing Charlie.  
He was immediately surprised by the feeling of it, almost even passing out. “Hohooollly shiit…” His deturing vision; most likely from blood lost, returned to normal. “Is that what getting high feels like?”  
“Probably!” Colton yelled. “I used a whole fuck ton of Morphine!”  
Any wounds Charlie had were immediately healed, so was any pain from bruises, though the bruises themselves stayed.   
Colton then started healing others, until soldiers started running out of Mid Starlight. One of them even got on an MMG, and started firing at the horde of robots.  
A plane flew over them, and fired two rockets at the massive robot, and it fell backward, with it’s chest torn open, revealing a Xen Crystal Shard.  
Charlie ran towards the robot, pulling out the double barrel shotgun, and jumped over the crystal in its palm, and fired both shots, knocking him into the air.   
Another airstrike happened over the robots the military had engaged in.   
Charlie landed, and broke the glass in his chest with the shotgun’s stock, then grabbed the Crystal Shard. The large robot looked down at him, as he tore it out and threw it on the ground.  
The robot’s blue, glowing eyes faded away and it’s head fell back.  
Charlie climbed off and reloaded the shotgun. Walking away, he kept the gun trained on the robot, but nothing happened. Charlie put the shotgun away and turned around, then threw his hands in the air. “We killed it!”  
Breathing heavily, Charlie puts his guns away and walks towards the rest of the group.  
Colton puts his hands in the air. “If anybody is wounded or dead, let me know! I will help!”   
“So…” Charlie says, walking up to one of the soldiers. He sits down on the hood of the broken car. “You’re on our side now, huh?”  
The soldier nods. “Your friend showed us their face, once we realized you were all children, they changed our orders.” He checked his MP5 magazine. “Originally, it was to let you guys do your own thing and not to interfere, just protect civilians.” He reloaded the gun. “Then it was to help you guys.”  
Charlie got off the car. “Well, you’re taking orders from us now, keep doing what you were doing before, got it?” Without waiting for a response, Charlie walked away.  
The sounds of gunshots were still heard in the distance, but now a lot more explosions were heard too. 

Olivia walked down the stairs with her flashlight, now feeling a mix of emotions she’d never felt since 1972. At least, not in this combination. Anger, hatred, and depression.   
She opened the doors and it wasn’t what she had expected, rather than the first floor of the Mann Co building, she was back in Xen. A cave. Olivia walked through the opened door. The area darkened, and Satan walked towards her.  
“So, it appears this is the second time we meet, is that correct? Well, none the less, I would like you to complete the job with the murder of Fortress Frontline.” He steps closer. “They are going to Coal Town in New Mexico. Alone. Kill them there, and I will reward you… Nicely…” He turned around and walked away as the area faded back to the first floor of Mann Co, only lit by the moon outside.  
She took the radio off his pocket, then hesitated. “Call off the attack, bringing the robots to Coal Town. And get the suit ready. I might have to use it.”  
“Yes boss.” One of the soldiers responded.

A few minutes had gone by, Colton was healing the soldiers, and reviving the dead while everyone else were waiting around for something to happen. Someone to fire off the first shot, someone to die, anything that would be the least bit entertaining to them. A car drove up. Immediately, all the soldiers had their guns trained on it, but held their fire.  
The team would normally pull their weapons out automatically, but with this many soldiers, saw it unnecessary. Still though, they had their hands on their weapons, ready to draw if need be.  
The door opened and Pauling stepped out with her hands in the air, appropriately. She looked around until she saw the group. “Christ, some of you aren’t looking too good.”  
“Climbed a robot, then got thrown through a few windows.” Charlie says.  
“Thrown through a wall.” Audric says.  
“Got a car thrown at me.” Colton says.  
“Well, glad to see you’re all still alive…” Pauling says. “You do know you still have no kill her, right?”   
Colton nods. “Yeah, if you know where she is, it’d be helpful if you told us.”  
Olivia looked around. None of the soldiers were listening. “Coal Town, New Mexico.” She says. “Olivia goes there often, and while you were having fun with the…” She looks at the large robot. “‘Playtoy’, I noticed her leaving the city, and that’s likely where she was going. It’ll be the biggest wave of robots you fight, but do it correctly, you’ll make it.”  
“That’ll be a few day drive.” Colton says. “You sure she wasn’t flying?”  
“No, driving.” Kira says. “They have no ability to fly, due to the current situation.”  
Charlie groaned and walked over to his bike. “Well.” He lifted some rubble off of it and checked if it was still working. “New Mexico it is, let’s get going.”  
January 22nd, Monday.

The ride to New Mexico was an annoyance. The group constantly gained the attention of the cops by stealing money from people for gas, robbed a few stores for food, the casual stuff they’d do back in Starlight.  
Though, at the end of the day.  
They still made it to New Mexico.  
It was nighttime again, they’d been here for about three days now. A Mann Co facility was seen off in the distance, though that’s what they wanted. They were there, waiting. Zachary had made a makeshift Flamethrower, Ian had found an old blueprint in the snow, then built something based off of it. A dispenser, using components of an older medigun, and dispensed ammo. Just what had been needed. They also made arrangements to the new Medigun, and now, all that there was to do was wait until Olivia made the first move.  
Olivia and a Mann Co employee watched from the top of a hill. Olivia sat on a rock, while the employee watched them through binoculars.  
“What are they doing?” Olivia asked.  
“Nothing.” The soldier says. He puts down the binoculars. “They’ve just been… Waiting there. I don’t even know what for.”  
“I do.” Olivia says. She gets up. “Send in the robots.”  
The soldier nodded.  
Ethan walked out of the Mann Mining Company building. His gas mask was taken off, and leaned against the wall. He looked up into the night sky and closed his eyes, then glanced over at the Mann Co Facility. Ethan looked back at the sky right before looking back at the facility.  
A carrier tank drove towards them off in the distance.  
“Oh shit…” Ethan practically felt his heart stop for a second. He grabbed the door and ran inside.

“Are you sure it was a good idea to listen to that guy for medical advice?” Danielle asked. Her and Colton were in the Post and Parcel building. “He even lost his medical licence because the guy woke up without a skeleton.”  
“If he could do that without killing the guy, it’s good enough for me.” Colton says. The radio behind him goes off. He turns around and grabs it. “Hey, what is it?”   
“They’re coming.” Ethan says. “They’re coming, grab the team, we gotta get ready.”  
“Shit.” Colton puts the radio down and gets up.  
“What is it?”  
Colton walks over to the wall and takes the Medigun off the wall. “Grab your shit.” He grabs her grenade launcher and tosses it to her.  
Danielle takes her hand out from under the blanket she had and grabbed it.  
The two grabbed their weapons, and whatever part of their suits they weren’t wearing, and walked out the door.   
Charlie sat down on the bridge, texting a friend.  
“Hey!” Colton yells. “Grab your shit!”  
Charlie looks up at the carrier tank off in the distance. He quickly types something on his phone, turns it off, then stuffs it in his bag. He grabs his gloves and grabs the bag, then jumps off the bridge into the snow.  
Ian sat in a chair against the wall, sleeping. Charlie walked over and shook Ian and he woke up.  
“C’mon. Let’s go. They’re coming.”  
“Shit, really?” Ian looked off in the distance. “Shit…” He got up and started grabbing his weapons.  
The rest of the group walked to where Ethan was, and he walked out, putting on his gas mask, while the rest of the people inside the building walked out. “They already know.” He says.  
Kira sat against the wall listening to music while reading her book, until she saw someone step in front of her. She looked up at Brian and took out her earbuds. She got up and put everything away, then jumped onto the ground where the rest of the team was. They stood in a line, watching as the carrier stopped.  
Kira could feel her heart beating rapidly. “Okay, okay, okay…” She was whispering.  
The carrier started to open, and Colton got the Medigun ready.  
Ian wrangled the Sentry Gun in front of the Salt Rock building using his robotic arm.  
They came closer and closer, then the soldiers fired off the first rockets.  
Immediately, the entire team opened fire at the robots, and Colton flicked a switch on the medigun.  
A red, large, transparent shield came out of the medigun in front of the entire team. They all kept firing as the robots fired rockets, grenades, and bullets, which all hit the shield and failed to hurt anybody on the team, as they stayed behind their mobile cover and kept shooting.  
The shield went down and the team scattered.   
Charlie ran over to a Sniper, grabbed them by the arm, then jumped off a wall, over the robot, igniting a sword to tear the arm off. Charlie then grabbed the robot. “Hey, Bri!” He threw the robot at another, and Brian fired a single explosive arrow, destroying five, including the one Charlie had just thrown.  
Danielle, with her sword out, lunged herself at a Heavy, tearing into its head. Danielle struggled to pull it out, then held the grenade launcher with her left hand as she put her foot on the robot, trying to pull the sword out. She pulled it out, and staggered into another robot.  
It grabbed Danielle and threw her against the wall, and pointed a shotgun to her head.  
Colton kicked the robot, and stabbed it in the neck with it’s bonesaw.  
Ian stood behind the Sentry Gun, firing two pistols at the horde of robots. Multiple rockets fly in his direction and hit the sentry gun at once, knocking him into a wall, and destroying the gun. He gets up and grabs the shotgun, and starts firing as he makes a retreat to where Brian was.  
Ethan flies through the air, and lands on a sniper who was aiming at Brian. He smashed his crowbar into its neck, and used it to rip off it’s head before he started firing at the horde as well.   
Audric fired off his Heavy Machine Gun as Charlie ran past him.   
He ignited his sword and started to jump in between robots, cutting them in half as he jumped off of them. As he neared the cut boarded off path to the mine, he threw the sword away, and pulled out his dual pistols.  
A sniper aimed for Charlie next to the Mann Mining Corporation building, and Zachary swung his Axe into the back of its neck. He left the axe in the back of it’s neck, and took his flamethrower off his back and started to light everything he could see on fire.  
Charlie was still where he was before. He turned around, as the robots were coming from behind him, and got kicked by a large, Pyro robot.  
A Heavy robot grabbed Charlie off the ground and threw him through the wooden wall of the Chaps, Dry Goods building, and it falls down on him.  
Danielle impaled the unarmed Heavy robot in the back with her sword, and kicked it onto the ground, then proceeds to shoot at the large Pyro as she runs over to the wood building. Danielle holsters the gun as the digs through wood. She moves some and helps Charlie up. “Come on, Charlie, we don’t have time for you to be trapped under a building!”  
Charlie staggered as he reached for his two pistols. “I ain’t goin’ down yet…”  
He looked at the Pyro as it started to engolgh the Mann Mining building in flames. It turned to Charlie and Danielle, and Colton jumped in front of the two, igniting another shield, causing the flames from the robot’s flamethrower to bounce off to the Miners Barrage building.  
Kira ran over and threw a sapper onto the robot, stunning it.  
Charlie, realizing his chance, painfully ran over to the robot, pulling his Double Barrel Shotgun out, he jumped and fired at the ground, launching himself up to the robot’s torso. He dropped the shotgun and started climbing the robot, then ignited the Lighting sword in it’s head. He tore it out and fell into the snow.  
Kira ran over and helped him up. “Doc, Charlie’s not lookin’ too good!”  
His face was bruised, he had a black eye, and his lip was bleeding.  
From behind them, the entrance to the mine explodes, and a blue infantry tank rolls out.  
Zachary, looks at the tank from on top of the Salt Rock building.  
Ian runs up behind him holding a gas can. “Ian, you got your flair gun?”  
Zachary simply nods and takes the flare gun from his side. Ian throws it into the air and Zachary shoots it in the air.  
The flare hits the gas can, and explodes. Fire fell all over the tank, and the buildings surrounding it. More and more robots invade the area, all burning immediately.  
The tank fires a round at the Salt Rock building.  
Colton starts healing Charlie, and he starts firing at the tank. “How do we take this thing down!”  
“Shooting it won’t work!” Ian yells. “The thing’s coated in ballistic armor!”  
“The hell does that mean?” Danielle asks.  
Colton ignites another shield with the Medigun, but the recoil from another tank shell still knocks him back, and knocks the Medigun out of his hands.  
“It means you can’t shoot the fucking thing!” Zachary says.  
Charlie does a roll, narrowly dodging another tank shell and it hits whatever of the Salt Rock building what wasn’t destroyed before. “Okay, what the hell do we do then!? Would the necklaces work!?”  
“Not yours!” Ian says. “Your sword is hot enough to cut through the robots, though this is made of a different metal! The only other necklace that has a sword would be the Fire Necklace, and Olivia has it!”  
Colton strafes around the tank while blind firing trying to draw it’s attention. “So, what you’re saying is…!” He grabs an SMG from a Sniper Bot. “We don’t have anything to destroy this thing!”  
“The only way is by getting an explosive into the gun!” Ian says. “Let Danielle, her grenades work in an arch, so they’ll be easier to get them in!”  
She took the grenade launcher from her back. “Why did I sign up for this fucking job?” She mutters.   
“Okay, Danielle, draw it’s attention, and get a grenade into the-” Colton is interrupted.  
“Got it!” Danielle says.  
Olivia watches from a distance, growing increasingly angrier. She takes a breath and turns to the employee next to her. “When they destroy that tank, bomb the place. The entire fucking thing. And get the suit ready, just incase they survive. I don’t want a single one of them leaving this place alive.”  
The employee hesitated. “Uh- Yes, boss.” He starts walking away and takes a radio off his side.  
Danielle held the grenade launcher in her right hand, with the stickybomb launcher in her left. She kept strafing around the tank, hoping to hit a lucky shot. She stopped, and waited for the tank to catch up with her. The moment it looked at her, she lifted the grenade launcher, and stared down the barrel for what felt like ages. She pulled the trigger and got down as the tank fired, and the grenade went down the barrel. A second later, the tank exploded and Danielle looked around. So did the rest of the team.  
“Hold up, you hear that?” Kira asks.  
“...No.” Charlie says.  
Kira smiles. “Exactly. There’s no more.”  
Audric reloads his gun. “Well… That’s it then… Let’s finish the job…”  
“Incoming!” Colton yells. He deploys another shield as missiles rain down on them all, though the amount of missiles break the shield almost instantly.  
Missiles rained down from the Mann Co Facility over where the group was, all the way until they ran out.  
Olivia looked at the destroyed area and smiled. “How many casualties are there?” She asks.  
“None.” The employee responds. “Scans indicate that they all appear to be injured, but there are no casualties.”  
Olivia takes a breath. “Fine then. I’ll do it myself.” She walks to the counter and takes the Fire Necklace.

Chapter 4  
Coal Town Ruins

Charlie laid underneath rock, and wood. Tons of it. He felt that something had penetrated his stomach, directly through him into the rock beneath him. He struggled to breath, and at this point, was in a sob. “Help! Somebody, anybody, I- I- I- Somebody, please!”  
Colton struggled to get some rock off of his arm, as Audric ran over.  
“Here, don’t worry, I’ll help you out.” Audric got down and lifted the rock off his arm.  
Colton gripped his arm, it was bleeding, and Colton could tell very much that it was broken. He then noticed Charlie’s screams over the microphone. “Charlie!? Charlie, can you hear me!? Where are hell are you!?”  
“I- I don’t know!” Charlie yells. “I can’t- I- I- I can’t breathe!”  
“Hold on, Charlie, we’re coming to find you.” Audric says.  
Danielle woke up and started coughing, then realized she was still on the surface. The sun was beginning to rise, though it was still dark. She looked around to realize she was alone. “Uh… Hello? Hello!? Is anybody there!?” Danielle waited for a response. “What the hell happened!?”  
Smoke, and dust had gone up into the air, simply forming an area of darkness over the ruins of Coal Town. Danielle got up. Her face was covered in dirt, and was slightly bruised. She looked around the area.  
Wood was burning, and water was flowing in over the ruins of the area. Whatever had just happened, they were now underground, or at least, would be if it weren’t for the bombing.  
Now, they were in what was left of the mines.

“Danielle? Danielle, can you hear me?” Pauling asked over the comms.

Danielle didn’t hear a word. Her comms weren’t working anymore. None of the team’s were. The only thing they could hear were themselves, or each other.  
“Danielle, Olivia is on her way, Charlie is wounded! You have to get underground and find the rest of the team!” Pauling could hear everything the team said, but they couldn’t hear anything she said. The bombing caused too much damage to their communication systems.

Being alone gave Danielle a sense of insecurity, fear. She started to look around, just to see if any of her teammates were nearby. Questions filled her mind. ‘How long was I out for? What if I was left behind, and assumed dead?’ The most important question on her mind. ‘Where are my teammates?’ A few seconds went back, and she noticed someone, decked out in a red, blue, and purple armor.  
Their helmet was black, with a blue visor. Their arms were exposed, and black hair went through the back of their helmet.  
Danielle checked to see if she still had her weapons, simply ready to draw her sword if anything happened. Sure enough, she did. “Hey! Who are you?” She asked.  
“Pauling… I know you can hear me.” The person said. “You could not live with your own failure… So many years ago… Now… Tell me… Where did that bring these kids…?” A red sword that looked as though it was made from fire. “Right… Back... to me.”  
Danielle took a breath, and drew her sword. She nodded.  
“I thought that it was just a phase. That you would stop on your own. But you have shown me that was just wishful thinking. I’m grateful… Grateful that you were so persistent that I could finish the job he gave me.”  
“Who?” Danielle asked.  
Olivia smiled under her mask. “That’s the best part… You’ll never know.”  
Danielle charged at Olivia with her sword while screaming.

Ian laid on the ground, unconscious. Kira walked over and nudged him awake. Ian woke up and looked at her, confused. “What?” He looked around. “What happened?”  
“When you fuck with Olivia, she tends to fuck with you back.” Kira says. “Watch, you’ll see. We’re somewhere in the mines right now, we’ve gotta get to the surface.”

Colton ran over to Charlie. “Shit, Audric, help me lift this!”  
Audric ran over and the two lifted the rocks and wood off of Charlie, all while he screamed in pain with the wood being torn from his stomach.  
Colton got down and looked at Charlie. “Okay, Franklin, you’ve got several bruises, quite possibly several fractures, both major and minor, maybe a few broken ribs, and a serious wound, and you need medical attention, ASAP.” He put Charlie’s arm over his shoulder. “Come on, we gotta get to the surface. Audric, lead the way.”  
He nodded and took a shotgun off his back.

Brian woke up, and immediately coughed to the smoke. He looked around. Zachary was trying to get a piece of debris off of Ethan. He looked up at Brian. “Bri! I need your help over here!”  
“Shit…” Brian walked ran over and helped Zachary lift the debris off Ethan. He didn’t move. Brian got down and checked his pulse. “He’s alive.” Brian grabbed his bow off the ground and pulled out an arrow. “Carry him, we gotta find everyone else.”  
Zachary nods and picks up Ethan.

Danielle ducks as Olivia swings her sword, then takes a swing with her own sword. She cracks the visor with a sword swing, then Olivia swings at Danielle. She tries to block, though the fire sword cuts straight through Danielle’s, and leaves a cut on Danielle’s stomach and chest.  
Olivia kicks Danielle in the wound, and knocks her onto the ground.   
As Danielle tries to get up, Olivia stabs her in the stomach and she screams.  
Normally, Olivia would feel something while doing this. Sadness, empathy, anything. Now, she felt nothing. All she felt was anger… And happiness. This was revenge, this was what they deserved. They had killed her father, after all. “I want you to know that… What I’m going to do... to you and your… Annoying… Little friends… I’m gonna enjoy it… Very, very much.”   
A bullet hit the back of Olivia’s helmet, and she turned around.  
Kira ran close while blind firing at Olivia. Every shot except her first one was missed.  
“So be it.” She turns back and pulls the sword out of Danielle stomach, and starts charging for Kira.  
Kira fires one last shot and hits the front of Olivia’s visor, cracking it again. Kira threw the unloaded gun at Olivia and took her switchblade from her pocket.  
Olivia swung her sword and Kira got down, then jumped and smashed her knife into the front of the visor. Kira tears it out, and stabs it again. Olivia grabs Kira’s arm as she tries to pull the knife out, and strikes her elbow, breaking her arm. She grabs Kira by the neck and throws throws her aside.  
She ignites another Fire Sword and walks towards Kira. Before she could do anything, a blast of electricity hit her from behind, and she was knocked forward. She got up and looked to see where it came from.  
Charlie stood there, with his palm open and leaning against Colton. He pushed himself off Colton and ignited an Electro Sword.  
Olivia and Charlie charged at each other.  
Charlie got down as Olivia swung her sword, and stuck her back. She turned around and stuck, and Charlie blocked. He grabbed her arm and jumped onto her shoulders. Charlie did a backflip on top of her, and smashed her helmet, cracking it. He stood on top of her and ignited another sword.  
Olivia struck his knee and grabbed him by the neck, and punched him in the nose with her metal gauntlet, knocking him onto the ground. She got up, and grabbed him by the back of his jacket, and threw him.  
He looked up at her, and she tore off the cracked helmet and punched him in the face, and kicked him in the stomach. Olivia’s gauntlet lit on fire, and she punched Charlie again, knocking him into the air.  
He hit his head on the ground and looked at Olivia as she plunged a sword into his, stabbing one of his lungs. She grabbed the lightning necklace and tore it off of Charlie’s neck, and threw it aside.   
Kira laid there on the ground as the necklace landed a few feet in front of her. The chain formed back together after being torn apart, almost as though it was magnetic. Kira looked at Danielle, and she simply nodded towards Kira. “Get me hers…” She says, only loud enough for Kira to hear.  
Olivia grabbed Charlie by the neck and lifted him up into the air. “You and your friends won’t be remembered. I’ll make damn sure of-” Before she could finish the sentence, Audric hit her in the face, hard enough to send her to the ground. She looked at Audric as he grabbed her by the neck, and pulled back his arm to punch her.  
She ignited another sword in his stomach, and kicked him away. Audric tried getting up, but before he could, Olivia had stabbed him in the heart. “Pathetic.”  
Ian’s sentry gun started to shoot at her from a distance. Some of the bullets hit her arm, as she tried covering her face. Olivia formed a Fire Axe and started to run towards the sentry gun, most of the bullets hitting her armor.   
Ian started running away from the gun as Olivia jumped into the air. She smashed the axe into the ground, creating a shockwave of fire, melting the sentry immediately, and causing anything flammable nearby to immediately set on fire.  
Olivia looked around and saw one thing.  
Kira stood there, smiling a bloody smile as she put on a second necklace. The moment she let go of it, electricity ran up her right arm and she fell to her knees. Once the electricity stopped, she looked up at Olivia, who looked almost stunned.  
“So… Be it.” Olivia says. She blast Kira with fire, igniting the trench coat.  
Kira threw the coat away, and ignited a lightning sword and started running towards Olivia.   
Olivia ignited her sword and the two hit each other’s swords.  
Olivia kicked Kira in the knee, and punched her in the face, knocking her to the ground. She put her foot on Kira’s chest before a Collateral Arrow goes directly through her leg. Olivia screams in pain, and falls to her knees.  
Kira elbows Olivia in the face, knocking her onto the ground next to her. She jumps on top of Olivia, and tears the fire necklace off, and throws it aside, and one of Olivia’s gauntlets extends a blade directly through her chest. She lifts Kira into the air, as her other gauntlet extends another blade, and Olivia stabs her with that one too.  
“Hey, asshole!” Danielle yells.   
Olivia looks over at her.  
There she stood, fire in her hand, and the ground around her looking as though it was slowly heating up. “You want me dead…?” Danielle asks. “Come and do it yourself…” A melted substance flies towards Olivia and she blocks with her arms. It was simply the most agonizing thing she’d ever felt, but she didn’t care. Olivia wanted them dead, and she was sure as hell going to do it. She already had one down, it was only eight more to go.  
Danielle and Olivia charged at each other.  
Olivia extended the blade on her gauntlet and tried to stab Danielle. She grabbed Olivia’s arm, then grabbed the blade. Using the necklace, Danielle heated it up, and tore it off. She stabbed Olivia in the stomach with her own blade, grabbed her by the back of the head, and kneed her in the nose. Danielle kicked her onto the ground and ignited a Fire Sword, and stepped over her, ready to do a finishing move.  
Olivia used her other gauntlet to extend a blade into Danielle’s leg. She grabbed Danielle’s hair, and started beating her with the metal gauntlets. She tore the necklace off Danielle, grabbed her by the neck, and got up. She lifted Danielle into the air, and hit her across the face once more, knocking her onto the ground.  
Kira ignited another electro sword and ran up to Olivia. She swung her head, and Olivia got down. She punched Kira in the face, breaking the glasses she had.  
Olivia grabbed Kira and put her in a headlock, trying to choke her out. She struggled to get free, but realized that she couldn’t.  
Kira put her hands on her chest, and ignited an Electro Sword, straight through her lung and into Olivia’s heart. Kira tore the sword out of them, and she fell to the ground, and so did Olivia.  
Kira turned around, smiling that same bloody smile she had minutes ago.  
Olivia covered her wound, trying not to lose blood, but the damage had already been done to her. She laid on the ground, gasping for air. She looked at Kira, who sat there smiling. Olivia thought that was psychotic, because she didn’t know it was forced. She chooses to utter her last words. Olivia coughs. “See you in hell…” Olivia starts laughing and coughing at the same time, before she stops, and her pupils dilate.   
Audric had dragged himself towards a piece of debris to lean on, and fell unconscious there during the remainder of the battle.  
Charlie runs over and tries to shake him awake. “Hey, hey, c’mon, man, wake up…” He says.   
Audric puts a bloody hand on Charlie’s arm. “Did…” He coughs. “Did we do it…? Did we win…?”  
Charlie looks away at Olivia’s lifeless body. Kira closed Olivia’s eyes, and began to sob silently. Charlie looked back at Audric. He took his hand and nodded. “Yes. We did it, we won.” Charlie moved Audric’s other hand and started to put pressure on the wound. “Come on, you’re gonna be fine, man, okay? Okay?” At this point, Charlie was starting to sob, even hyperventilate.   
“Starlight… They need you… All of you… Promise me something…”  
Charlie looked up at Audric.  
“Promise me that… You’ll keep protecting them… The civilians… They need all of you…” Audric coughed up more blood. “They need you…” Audric went limp, and his pupils dilated.  
“...Audric?” Charlie said. He started sobbing on Audric’s dead shoulder.  
Danielle limped over, and grabbed Charlie’s hand.  
Charlie looked at Audric’s face. “I promise…” He said. 

The group sat in the abandoned school in Starlight with the TV on, while Ian and Colton tried to remake the medigun.  
“Most recent in the news, I- Truthfully, I don’t know where to begin. The Robotic Attack ended last week, where Starlight’s infamous mercenaries, Fortress Frontline went to Coal Town and killed the CEO of Mann Corporation, Olivia Mann. The company was recently given back to Saxton Hale, the former CEO from 1972. Furthermore, Fortress Frontline’s identities were revealed during the Robot War, and we have direct confirmation that they are all Adolescent Teenagers. Fortress Frontline’s Heavy, Audric Hiltner was stabbed and killed during the Robot War. His death was to save the life of his friend, Charlie Franklin, Fortress Frontline’s Scout. Colonel Smith Middle School will be having a memorial next Monday, and every school in Starlight City will be closed Monday. Despite the Robot War being over, the military has said they will not give the all clear to return to Starlight until next Tuesday.”  
The front door opened and Pauling walked in. “You did it. The nine of you actually did it. She put a briefcase on the table. “I promised you money for the job, so, here it is.” She opened the briefcase. “Originally, it was going to be $5,000 each, but due to the events of the past week, I feel it’s more fair to do this. $10,000 dollars for each of you.”  
“Jesus…” Colton said. He grabbed some of the cash. “You’re serious?”  
“I’m serious.” Pauling said.  
“Leave it in my room.” Charlie says. He gets up and grabs his bag. “I’ve gotta go do something. I’ll be back later tonight.”  
“What are you doing?” Danielle asks.  
Charlie turns around and looks at her with a stern look on his face. “I’m going to meet an old friend.” He walked out of the front door.

Later that night, Jason was in the living room. He knew he couldn’t live by himself much longer. With his only legal guardian being dead now, it was only a matter of time. All he felt was fear, and a burning hate for Charlie.  
A person knocked on the front door, and he paused the TV. He grabbed a dagger off the desk, and walked over to the door. He opened it, and a person kicked him onto the ground.  
Charlie placed a foot onto Jason’s neck. “Remember 1976? When you killed Sara?”  
Jason struggled to get the words out. “I… Have no idea… What you’re… Talking about.”  
Charlie took the lever shotgun off his bag and hit Jason in the face with it’s stock. “Bullshit, I remember the very moment you stabbed me in the neck. I remember exactly how you stabbed my sister in the eye, cut her stomach open. I never forgot it.” Charlie reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. “So I’m gonna do the exact same… To you.”  
Jason felt his heart start being faster. “Charlie, listen man… I have no idea what you’re-”  
Charlie stabbed Jason in the eye with the knife, causing him to scream in pain. Charlie tore out his eye, and pushed it off of the knife, before he cut Jason’s stomach open. He reached into his bag and pulled out a gas can, and a box of matches. He started to pour gasoline all over the building. Upon walking back to the door, he lit a match, and dropped the box, causing the building to immediately light on fire.  
He watched from across the street as the building exploded. “Say hello to Sara for me.” Charlie mutters.


End file.
